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Litchfield County 
Sketches 



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LITCHFIELD COUNTY 
SKETCHES 

BY NEWELL MEEKER CALHOUN 



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LITCHFIELD COUNTY 
UNIVERSITY CLUB 

1906 



LIBRARY of CONSR£SS 

JAN t_d^ 1907 



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Copyright 1906 
Newell Meeker Calhoun 



Par Avance 

This Volume is one of a series published under the 

auspices of the Litchfield County University Club, 

and in accordance with a proposition made 

to the Club by one of its members, Mr. 

Carl Stoeckel, of Norfolk, Connecticut 

Howard Williston Carter 

Secretary 



Prelude 

" Land of my birth, thou art a holy land ! 
Strong in thy virtue niayest thou ever stand, 
As in thy soil and mountains thou art strong! 
And as thy mountain echoes now prolong 
The cadence of thy waterfalls,— forever 
Be the voice lifted up of Time's broad river, 
As on it rushes to the eternal sea, 
Sounding the praises of thy sons and thee." 

JOHN PIERPONT, 

Born at Litchfield South Farms, April 6, 1785 



Dedication 

To 3Ir. and Mrs. Carl Stoeckel 

Lovers of Litchfield County 

and 

Promoters of its Highest Interests 

This Volume 

is 

Respectfully Dedicated 



Foreword 



LITCHFIELD COUNTY bears the same rela> 
tion to the rest of the State of Connecticut that 
the Lake region does to Old England. As about 
Windermere, Grasmere and UUswater, in famous West- 
moreland, poets, preachers and literary men have made 
their homes, so more and more there is coming to our 
momitain comity this same delightful class of people. 
From New Haven, Princeton and New York university 
presidents and professors have turned their faces north- 
ward to these delightful hilltops, and here many of 
them have built their homes. Doctors, lawyers and 
editors are finding out that the ozone of these hills is 
better than drugs, and just as good as foreign travel. 
Henry Clay Trmnbull expressed it as his opinion, after 
careful thought and study, that Litchfield County had 
produced more distinguished men than any other county 
in the United States. Our University Club, born in 
Norfolk, is one of the most prosperous in the country 
outside the great cities. The county is also becoming a 
musical centre through the Litchfield County Choral 
Union, established and maintained through the gener- 
osity of Mr. and Mrs. Carl Stoeckel, of Norfolk. 

Westmoreland County, in England, cannot boast any 
more lakes than are to be found within our borders, and 
has no rivers to speak of, while Litclifield County is trav- 



Foreword 

ersed by the Farmington and the Naugatuck, the She- 
paug and the Housatonic. The time is come for us to 
appreciate better our own State and county. Lovers of 
the beautiful have only to look about them to find scen- 
ery that will match, if not excel, that of the Old World. 

If any thought or picture in these sketches shall make 
the pulses beat a little faster and the color come to the 
cheeks of any of her sons and daughters, as they say 
with pride, "This is my native count}^" our work will 
not have been in vain. If, better yet, it shall lead some 
of them back to their birthplace, to beautify the old 
home, to build a library or a church, to restore the old 
cemetery in memory of the dear ones gone, and, best 
of all, to live amongst us, and make the men and women 
of our county partakers of their lives, enriched by edu- 
cation and travel, then this little book will have accom- 
plished its purpose. To be a lover of our county is well, 
to be a native is better, but he has attained to a high 
state of earthly happiness who is lover, native and resi- 
dent of the best county of the best State in our beloved 
land. ]v^. M. C. 

Second Congregational Church, 

Winsted, Connecticut, ]VIarch 2, 1906. 



Illustrations 







PAGE 


Wood Road, Winchester 


F. H. De Mars 


Frontispiece 


Through the Forest 


F. H. De Mars 


24 


Sugar Camp 


Virgil Taylor 


28 


Oxen Ploughing 


Mrs. J. C. Kendall 


31 


Hay Field 


Mrs. J. C. Kendall 


34 


Farmington River 


King Sheldon 


38 


Tunxis Falls 


F. H. De Mars 


42 


Highland Lake 


N. M. Calhoun 


44 


A Bethlehem Street 


George W. Peck 


48 


Bellamy Monument 


George TV. Peck 


54 


Bank of Laurel 


F. H. De Mars 


58 


A Litchfield Street 


King Sheldon 


62 


Lake Waramaug 


J. I. West 


66 


Old House with Well-sweep 


F. H. De Mars 


70 


INIilking Time 


Mrs. J. C. Kendall 


74 


Old Home 


N. M. Calhoun 


76 


A Mournful Reminder 


F. H. De Mars 


82 


Old School House 


N. M. Calhoun 


88 


Canaan Valley 


King Sheldon 


92 


Trout Brook in Winter 


N. M. Calhoun 


94 


Highway in Winter 


Mrs. J. C. Kendall 


100 


Old Virginia Rail Fence 


F. H. De Mars 


106 


Sheep in Pasture 


Mrs. J. C. Kendall 


109 


Colebrook River 


F. H. De Mars 


112 


Trout Brook, Norfolk 


Mrs. J. C. Kendall 


114 



Illustrations— Continued 







PAGE 


Old ]Mill 


King Sheldon 


118 


A Country Doctor 


Old Print 


124 


Shepaug River^ Washington 


J. I. West 


128 


Congregational Church, Morrij 


i Anon. 


132 


Birthplace of John Pierpont 


Old Print 


136 


John Pierpont^ D. D. 


Anon. 


140 


Lower Housatonic Valley 


Anon. 


144 


A New jVIilford Street 


Anon. 


146 


Twin Lakes 


King Sheldon 


150 


Harwinton Meeting House 


King Sheldon 


154 


Town Hill Meeting House 


King Sheldon 


158 


The Neglected Graveyard 


N. M. Calhoun 


164 


A Yankee Farmer 


Anon. 


170 


Housatonic Valley at Kent 


Rev. Geo. W. Curtis 


175 


Map of Litchfield County 


W. Morey, Jr., C. E. 


Facing page 57 


Tail Pieces Mrs. Clara G. Chapman 





^•■' 



Contents 

PAGE 

Grass-grown Roads 19 

The Procession of the Seasons 27 

The Upper Reaches of the Farmington 37 

Two Country Parsons 47 

The Finest Drive in the World 57 

White Roses and Clover Blooms 71 

A Deserted Farm 77 

The Old Red School House 85 



A Highway in Winter 95 

Stone Walls and Shad i"„nces 103 

Trout Brooks Ill 

The Country Doctor 121 

A Hill-town fleeting House 131 

The Delectable Mountains 143 

Huckleberrying 153 

The Neglected Graveyard 161 

The Yankee Farmer 167 




'The scenery and music are changed continuously. 



LITCHFIELD COUNTY 
SKETCHES 



Grass-grown Roads 

THIS particular road was not always grass-grown, 
for the wheels, the hoofs and the feet passed 
along too often. But the West called with loud 
voice, and the city held out riches in the one hand and 
pleasure in the other, and those \.ho had passed this way 
often in the old days have hardened their hearts and gone 
away. So it came to pass that the grass grew luxuri- 
ously where wheels once rattled over the stones. 

The grass-grown road is not the same for two days 
in the season. This is a pleasure-house where the scen- 
ery and music are changed continuously by unseen 
hands. It will first show you some hepaticas in the 
warm hollow by the fence, and blood root and dog 
violets and adder tongues. Then the strawberries begin 
to crowd out toward the middle of the road, sending out 
advance runners, and showing white starlike blossoms, 
in spite of roadside dirt and dust. The low vine black- 
berries are only a day or two behind. These climb the 
lichen-covered wall and drape the unsightly piles of 
stone which the farmer some time since dumped heed- 
lessly by the roadside. Thej^ too have snowy white 

19 



Grass -grown Roads 

blooms ill marked contrast to the juicy blackberry, sweet 
and toothsome, which is promised. Then come the rasp- 
berry blossoms, both red and black, and the high bush 
blackberries, all contending for their highway rights. 
They must know that the boy has his eye upon them 
from the first, and has marked them for his own. It is 
just possible tliat they like boys and girls and birds. 
These last are only paid back for the cleaning off from 
their stems and leaves of some destructive worms both 
big and little, and sundry and divers bugs. What the 
boy is paid for who can tell, for he does nothing for all 
these wild berry bushes, save to watch them. He lias been 
known, however, to spare their lives when the farmer 
had passed sentence of death upon them. There must 
be a tradition of this passed on from mother berry bush 
to motlier berry bush, so that they know that the boy 
always voted not to cut them down so long as they pro- 
duced berries. 

These white and sho'v\y blooms often had mixed in 
with them the coral colored huckleberry blossoms, which 
modestly seemed to say, "We do not brag so loud as 
our neighbors, but just wait and see what we ^vi\l do." 
The huckleberry bush is more civilized than the black- 
berry vines, for it lias no savage thorns to scratch the 
hands of the pickers of the fiiiit. 

The grass-grown road, winding up and down and in 
and out until stopped by a pair of bars or by a travelled 
highway, has other promises for the school children who 
pass that way, their feet, bare and brown, cooled by the 
green grass. There are the choke-cherry blossoms, snow 

20 



Grass -gro^vn Roads 

white and so thick as ahiiost to hide the httle green 
leaves. They have pushed themselves back into the 
fence corners, and even have been known to occupy the 
soil with the timibling down stone wall, in their hu- 
niiHty and desire not to seem to intrude. The farmer 
said they were good for nothing, but the birds said they 
helped out their larder wonderfully, and the boy sought 
them as keenly as the birds, although the cherries red 
and yellow puckered his mouth and furred his tongue. 
They ^\•ere good to eat and he liked them. These same 
choke-cherries were highly artistic when in fruit as well 
as in blossom time. They gave a fine touch of color to 
the roadside in August, when color was mostly want- 
ing. Indeed, one can readily understand how they 
helped out the swamp maples and gave them a longer 
summer, before they put on their gorgeous garments, 
fair heralds of the death of the leaves. 

The elders took their tiu'n at wayside decoration. 
Snowy M'hite and in great clusters, they looked like white 
umbrellas, raised to protect the lesser plants from the 
increasing heat of the sun. The boy observed them, but 
had no particular use for the blossoms, although his sis- 
ters had, for they took them to the old red school house 
and decorated the teacher's desk with them. Those elders, 
however, were the boy's good friends, and he was always 
admiring the straightest of them, and thinking what 
"popguns" they would make. One was carefully se- 
lected, long between its joints, the ])ith pushed out with 
a stout hickory rod, paper pulp put in either end, the 
air compressed with the rod, and lo ! a mighty explosion. 

21 



Grass-grown Roads 

Occasionally one of the wads might hit something or 
somebody. This was the airgun of a former genera- 
tion. By j)utting a plug in the end of the gun in which 
a small goose quill had been inserted, and winding his 
rod to make an airtight valve, his popgun became a 
"squirt gun." This became the terror of the girls and 
his little brothers. 

Elderberries helped to make the wayside attractive 
later, when in place of the white clusters of bloom there 
were shown among the shining green leaves jet black 
bunches of berries. You could have a pie made of them, 
as you could of tlie choke-cherries, but neither were quite 
voted in by the Litchfield County housewife. 

The roadway was further made beautiful, as the sea- 
son wore away, by the sumachs. These were always 
under sentence of death, since a part of the family were 
bad, and the many had to bear the sins of a few. There 
was much ignorance as to ^vhich part of the family de- 
served to be killed, so that the good had to atone for the 
sins of the bad, as tliey always have to in this world of 
men and women and little children. The sumachs began 
tlieir fall advertising early, by displaying in July their 
long bunches of bright red berries. These had to come 
early or they would not have been seen at all, by reason 
of the flaming red leaves, which were among the first 
to show the Autumn's pencillings. Hardly anything 
is more beautiful than a clump of sumachs in early fall, 
when all other foliage save the swamp maple is still 
clothed in green. It has crowded out into the roadway 

22 



Grass -gro^vn Roads 

as far as it dare, and stands there in its scarlet cloak, im- 
perial sentinel of the king's highway. 

The scene changes rapidly as the September winds 
begin to blow, and the nights to show frosts in the val- 
leys, the Autumn seed of Winter's snows. The berry 
bushes are brilliant in their worn-out clothes, which drop 
from off them one by one in their beauty. The golden 
rod and asters make believe that there is time enough to 
enjoy themselves in their gay attire, imitating humans. 
The bitter-sweet is cracking open its bright berries, gor- 
geous both without and within, and every living thing, 
and dying thing, for that matter, puts on bright colors to 
celebrate the season's close. As if they were saying, 

"The leaves are getting scarlet^ 
The nuts are turning brown. 
Lest I should be old-fashioned, 
I'll put a trinket on." 

Nature does not do as we mortals have a way of doing 
in the putting on of black for our dead, for she is al- 
ways hopeful of a resurrection in the Springtime. God 
has a way of telling his secrets, and some people have a 
way of stopping their ears. Nature never does this; 
she always listens to what God has to say, and then takes 
the comfort of it. 

The grass-grown road would be attractive for its color 
and fruitage alone, but when you stop to listen there is 
not an hour in all the days of Spring, Summer and Au- 
tumn when there is not music. The birds are less dis- 

23 



Grass -grown Roads 

turbed than on more frequented highways, and sing just 
to hear themselves praise the One who made and feeds 
them. They do not sing for people alone, but for His 
ear, for they sing the sweetest when all the world is 
asleep. Then it must be for the Heavenly Father's sake, 
and for the joy of a few early risers, who must always 
be bird lovers. 

The roadside concert has its finer musicians by day 
and b}'^ night. The grass is full of them, some vocalists 
and some players on instruments peculiarly their own. 
He who takes their Stradivarius must take them. Their 
music is graded down to that fineness that can be heard 
only in the quiet stillness of the deserted roadside. Be- 
yond the power of the human ear there must be oratorios, 
choruses and solos from all the lesser folk who live on 
and are happy by the side of the grass-grown road. 

These two — the boy and the girl — chased butterflies, 
picked berries, and went to school along this same coun- 
try road, and in later years, he from his hilltop and she 
from the valley, walked as lovers and saw and heard and 
felt its beauty. But they do not care to live beside it 
now. Their eyes are blind to its homely beauty, and 
their ears deaf to its delightsome music. The odors of 
a thousand flowers do not awaken in them slumbering 
memories of the long ago. The god of this world hath 
blinded their eyes, appearing to them as pleasure, love 
of power and love of gain. The deceitfulness of riches 
and the mad pursuit of the butterflies of fashion ab- 
sorb their time and thought. It may be they will 
awaken some Summer day, open their eyes and hearts, 

25 



Grass -grown Roads 

and come back to see their old friends the birds and the 
flowers, and the mornings and the evenings which they 
used to love. It seems strange to us that they and others 
should prefer the Babel noises of the city to the heaven- 
ly stillness of some grass-grown road. Ah, well, if they 
all wanted to live in the country there would be no 
grass-grown roads for those of us who love them; then 
what should we do? 




26 



LITCHFIELD COUNTY 
SKETCHES 



II 

The Procession of the Seasons 

THE procession of the seasons, as seen through 
youthful eyes, along country lanes and up shaded 
slopes, was the most interesting thing in all the 
world. The \\'inding roads and the grassy fields, wooded 
uplands and corn-waving intervales are all there as of 
old, l)ut the seasons come and go unnoticed by the thou- 
sand toilers along city streets and in the marts of trade. 
The boy, long since a man, watches for the coming of the 
Spring in parks and tiny gardens, and sees only in 
memory the glorious procession of childhood. Spring 
with her lap full of flowers led the glad troop of the 
months, heralded by soft winds and sweet odors. With 
April first the sap began to stir in the trees, and the 
blood of the farmer and his boys flowed in sweet rhythm 
with it. Books were put aside for evening use, and all 
started for the sap bush, to make maple sugar and syrup. 
The sap ran in those days as if the tree itself would dis- 
solve, and the buckets were emptied into the great kettle, 
the fire was kindled, and the boiling away process begun. 
So all da}^ the blue smoke and the savory steam arose 
as sweet incense on Springtime's altar. As the twilight 

27 



The Procession of the Seasons 

fell, and the moon hung low in the west, like a white 
ghost of the full moon of last month, the sugaring off 
began. The maple wax from the kettle was poured on 
the snow, found under the hemlocks up the glen, for the 
delectation of the children, and afterward each was 
given a saucer of the sweet liquid from the kettle to stir 
until it was cooled, when lo! the most delicious of con- 
fections, fresh from the earth and the trees. Huyler 
cannot match the old-time maple wax and maple sugar, 
home-made and forest-made, eaten as the firelight under 
the kettle flared and flickered, lighting up the dark re- 
cesses of the woods. Sucli mornings as those were in 
the sugar camp, when the fu'st bluebirds were calling, 
and the robins began timidly to show themselves, and 
all the old wood sounds were heard again. Stumbling 
along with a bucket of sap, the sharp eyes of the boy dis- 
covered the arbutus half hidden by its green-brown 
leaves, smiling at him after its long Winter's nap. After 
a few days of sunshine the hepaticas and wood violets 
keep company with the arbutus, and together proclaim 
the coming of the Spring to an invalid sister, shut in- 
doors at the farm house. The squirrels and the wood- 
peckers and all the dear old forest friends are watched 
for and welcomed. What an education for the eye and 
ear was this out of doors life to growing childhood ! But 
this was only an interlude between the acts, for the scene 
soon changed, indeed was changing every hour. The 
sun mounted higher each daj% and its warmth made the 
grass green on the southern slopes, tempting one to lie 
down upon it. The sap had something to do now besides 

29 



The Procession of the Seasons 

flowing into buckets set to catch it, for it must be about 
its business. There were thousands of leaves to make, 
and branches to be strengthened, and httle twigs to be 
made longer, and tassels to hang out, and odors to dis- 
til, and seeds to provide with wings. So the buckets were 
put away, and the plough was burnished in the soil, 
and the brown sod turned over. As part payment for 
this kindness it oiFered its incense as a sweet smelling 
savor, welcomed always by the man who loves tlie soil. 
Ho^v beautifully the poet Holmes sings of The Plough- 
man: 

"Clear the brown path to meet his coulter's gleam. 
Lo ! on he comes behind his smoking team, 
With toil's bright dewdrops on his sunburnt brow, 
The lord of earth, the hero of the plough. 
These are the hands whose sturdy labor brings 
The peasant's food, the golden pomp of kings; 
This is the page whose letters shall be seen 
Changed by the sun to words of living green; 
This is the scholar whose immortal pen 
Spells the first lesson hunger taught to men ; 
These are the lines that heaven-commanded toil 
Shows on his deed — the charter of the soil." 

That "smoking team" was oftentimes a pair of half- 
broken steers, led by the family horse, on which the boy 
rode. This was not an easy job by any means, and not 
always to his comfort, for a stone at the point of the 
plough would bring the team up standing, throwing 
the boy forward on the neck of his steed, or pitching 
him off into the dirt in a very humbling way. Still he 

30 



The Procession of the Seasons 

rode a king, and led the van, determining where the 
rest should follow. Given his choice, however, he would 
have held the plough, for he had a way of thinking that 
the boy was always given the hardest work. He would 
have preferred to build the wall rather than to pick up 




Lo ! on he comes behind his smoking team." 



stones, cut the grass ratlier than ted it, and pitch it upon 
the cart rather than to rake after. 

The Spring hurried on even faster than this "smoking 
team," for it had a way of always being a little in ad- 
vance of tlie farmer. The seed must be planted, for a 
bobolink was seen this morning, and the little leaves on 
the walnut trees are as large as mouses' ears, both of 

31 



The Procession of the Seasons 

which were sure indications to the tiller of the soil. The 
corn was dropped and covered, and in a very few days 
the boy conld follow the rows and drop the small hand- 
ful of ashes and plaster on the shoots which ambitiously 
were pricking the soil. After that came the hoeing of 
corn and potatoes, with a few spare hours at noontime 
down by the brook, where the speckled trout lay beneath 
the bank. There was only an alder pole and a coarse 
line and hook, but the trout were captured all the same. 
<Then those rainy days, too wet to do any farm work, 
but glorious ones for following the old brook. The 
grass was wet, the bushes were wet and the boy was 
very, very wet, but never such sport as that old brook 
afforded on days when it rained too hard to work out 
of doors. 

Now the days had grown longer and the Fourth of 
July came round. Very likely the only celebration was 
that haying was begun on that day. There might be a 
visit to some celebration or picnic, but if so it was a red- 
letter Fourth. The haj^ had to be cut by hand in those 
days, although there were rumors that a machine had been 
made that would cut both hay and grain. The Litch- 
field County farmers, talking over the fence, discussed 
the possibility of ever using machines on such stony soil. 
The verdict usually was that before it could be done the 
stones would all have to be dug from the meadows, 
which promised a great task for many farmers. The 
dewy mornings now have a music all their own, the 
cheery sound of the mower sharpening his scythe, and 
its soft swish through the grass. The larks begin to be 

32 



The Procession of the Seasons 

alarmed, for the farmer is not depending on his neigh- 
bors, but is early in the field with his boys. As the sun 
mounts the heavens they rest under the old apple tree, 
and eat their lunch of hot gingerbread, with sweet milk 
from the cellar for a drink — food and drink equal to the 
nectar and ambrosia of the gods. As they rest they look 
complacently at the long swaths adown the field, and 
enjoy to the full the smell of the new-mown hay. But 
the locust saM's out his sharp-set music from a neighbor- 
ing tree, warning them that it will be hot by and bye, 
and so they spring to their work again. Then comes 
the rest at noontime, then the raking into windrows, 
and the carting to the capacious barn, and the stowing 
away in the great mows, while the grasshoppers and 
crickets sing their cheery songs of encouragement and 
approval. Then the shadows fall upon the field of the 
day's labors, with its long crinkled ways, and then 

"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, 
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, 
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, 
And leaves the world to darkness and to me." 

The procession moves on, and the awkward cradle 
l&js the ripe grain prone upon the gromid, and the cool 
nights and mornings, together with the music of the 
katydid in the maples, warn the farmer that the corn 
must be shocked, the potatoes dug and the corn husked, 
that everj^thing may be made snug for winter. About 
this time look out for Thanksgiving. It was never 
celebrated and never can be in its real old-time glory 

33 



The Procession of the Seasons 

outside of New England, where it originated. The 
farmhouse and the countrj^ are pecuharly adapted to 
help in its celebration. It furnishes such turkeys and 
chickens, such nuts and apj^les, and above all such a 
crisp, bright Thanksgiving air. There are no ovens like 
those old brick ones, heated with the black alder wood, 
which was fed into the capacious mouth unstintedly. 
When your mind turns fondly to pies, where in the 
world can you find sucli "]3ie timber" as on a Litchfield 
County farm? There they were on the long shelves in 
the pantry, where the pans of milk had stood in the 
summer, an inviting and imposing array, actually look- 
ing too good to eat on ordinary occasions. They were 
of every variet}^ and description; savory mince, highly 
colored huckleberry, marvellous tarts with legendary 
inscriptions wrought in their crusts, apple pies without 
crust and ^^dth crusts turned over, and last, but not least, 
golden pumpkin pies. But what were pies and other 
good things without an appetite, and where in all the 
world could an appetite be gotten for the Thanksgiv- 
ing dinner better than on the farm? The air was crisp 
and frosty, the sermon long and dull, unless the parson 
had some special reason for giving it to the Hittites 
and the Perizzites; the ride was invigorating from 
church, or, better yet, the walk, all combining to make 
the dinner a never to be forgotten one. Then came the 
long evening, all gathered around the fire, with stories 
and blind-man's-buff, and more pie and walnuts, and the 
making of molasses candy and popping corn ! Oh, those 
happy faces dear to memory ! But the long table grew 

35 



The Procession of the Seasons 

shorter with each recurring Thanksgiving Day; the 
circle narrowed around the old hearthstone; crowns of 
silver graced the heads of father and mother, and chairs 
were empty that once were filled with beloved forms. 
Then there came round the day for the home-going, and 
there was no home. The ashes were cold upon the 
hearth; the old clock no longer ticked out its glad wel- 
come from its corner; the blinds were closed, the old 
paths grass-grown, and the prayer, the song and the 
laughter resound in memory's chambers onty. 

"How strange it seems, with so much gone 
Of Life and Love, to still live on !" 




36 



LITCHFIELD COUNTY 
SKETCHES 



III 

The Upper Reaches of the Farmington 

EVEX those who are well acquainted with the re- 
gion of which we are writing do not ordinarily 
associate the Farmington River with Litchfield 
County. Its wild beauty, however, is very largely on 
its upper reaches, and within our borders. The gorge 
below New Hartford, known as Satan's Kingdom, 
Mdth the railroad tracks cut into the solid walls on either 
side, and the river rushing and swirling over its rocky 
bed, is a bit of Colorado in miniature. Above the same 
town the river widens out, because of the extensive mill 
dam, and is bordered by low-lying meadows, with 
fringes of trees and a background of wavy hills. These 
meadows are dotted with elms, whose wide-reaching, 
drooping branches shelter herds of cattle taking their 
noontime rest. At Pleasant Valley, three miles farther 
up, the hills have grown steeper, the river more noisy, 
and the scenery more rugged. From thence to River- 
ton is a most delightful drive, with pleasant surprises at 
every turn of the road. Sometimes you come out into 
the open, and have a magnificent view of hemlock 
sprinkled hills, which in Autumn show off the oaks, 
birches and liard maples to wonderful advantage. 
Again the carriage passes noiselessly over a thick bed 
of pine needles, while the pines overhead sing the old- 

37 



The Upper Reaches of the Farmington 

time dirges which they sang to Indian mourners in the 
long ago. Now you look upon an ancient mill, almost 
hidden by the trees, and again up a mountainside, down 
which a noisy brook is leaping. Another turn of the 
river and the road, and you look up the broad stream 
for a half mile or more, as the water tumbles over huge 
boulders or makes frothy eddies imder their dark shad- 
ows, with nothing to do the livelong day but to enjoy 
itself. Here the birds come to drink, and pay for their 
refreshment with a song. Do^mi through the dark 
woods a herd of deer have often been seen, pausing on 
the bank of the river to listen for any sounds betoken- 
ing danger. These beautiful animals are multiplying 
rapidly in the county, and, being protected from the 
hunters, are becoming more and more accustomed to 
the sight of men. They are often seen in the pastures 
feeding with the cows, as quietly as if they were a part 
of the herd. Driving or walking along the unfre- 
quented roads has, besides the interest of the landscape, 
the expectation of seeing not only deer crossing the 
way, but also many other wild animals and birds rarely 
seen on travelled highways. Gray squirrels, rabbits, 
woodchucks, foxes, partridges, pheasants, all take a look 
at you, and if your eyes are sharp and your feet light 
you may have a good look at them. 

At Riverton they used to make the river work, fash- 
ioning scythes for the farmers and making paper with 
which to wrap up the sales of country and city stores ; but 
the old mills are most of them silent now, the moss grow- 
ing over their unused wheels. These scythes were in 

39 



The I ppcr Reaches ot the Vaiuiiniiion 

great demand in the old da\*«. l>efore niowinii niaohines 
were invented. HeI^e at Riverton lived for many yeai^ 
a man who sold the produce of one of the mills, and 
afterward became the honored Governor of the State. 
Deserted stores and ck>sed houses and churches with 
small congregations tell of the inability of such remote 
places to compete with manufactiu*ing centres along 
the line of the railroads. The himi of machinery has 
given place to the more musical phish of water over 
the dam. as it itiles away the long Summer days. Sandy 
Brook llows into tlie Farmington here. Its name is 
prosaic, but not so the stream itself. Rising in Miissii- 
chusetts. it appears in our county as a sizable trout 
stream, and one of the l>est if times and seasons are 
observed. Through the wootis of Xorth Colebixx^k and 
Colebrook it takes its course, through lovely wooded 
valleys, alongside of the comitry roads, imder pictu- 
resque bridges that tremble witli the weight of horses 
and carriage. In the early Spring it is a raging tor- 
rent, while in the late Simimer it is a quiet, sedate 
stream, on its good beha\*ior. He who has spent a day 
in the montli of ^lay tishing along its banks has indeed 
dnmk of the ver)' elixir of life. A flush of green was 
on the birches, and the fragrance of tlie tiowei*s and 
all gro^^-ing things in tlie air. The birds just back 
from tlie Soutliland were trying all their new songs, 
and fairly beside themselves ^vitli joy to be again in 
Xorthern woods. There were love ditties in the air. and 
love making in the trees, ^\^tll the warm siuishine Al- 
tering tlirough tlie branches, making the trout lively and 

40 



The Upper Reaches of the Farmington 

playful. Sandy Brook can be followed long distances 
M'itliout siglit of human habitation. What a delight- 
ful place to forget the rushing, maddening course of 
things in the busy world, and have blessed communion 
with Xature, that dear mother of us all ! 

From Riverton to Xew Boston, along the Farming- 
ton, there are revealed to Xature lovers new beauties 
at every turn, showing the infinite possibilities of a 
stream born among the liills. As you go farther north 
toward the Berkshires, the landscape is more broken, 
with hills that are nearly high enough and rocky enough 
to be called mountains. The road takes you at times 
mider great forest trees, but the wandering sawmills 
are rapidly making the beautiful woods into lumber. 
Shaded drives in Litchfield County are likely to exist 
in memory only unless something can be done for the 
preservation of the forests. It is no uncommon thing 
for farms to be sold for what the lumber is worth, and 
then when the last stick of wood that is of any value 
has been cut the farm is abandoned. 

Returning to Riverton, one should follow up Mad 
River, through Robertsville to Tmixis Falls, and 
through the gorge where the electricity for Winsted is 
generated. There is a drop here in the river of per- 
haps one hundred feet within a half mile. When the 
river is full banked it is a beautiful sight to see it rush 
over the rocks, and noisily and at a breakneck pace seek 
the river below. Commercialism never makes Xature 
more interesting, but takes away her lovely charm in 
part. Her beauty is always accentuated by solitude. 

41 




It is a beautiful sight to see it rush over the rocks." 



The Upper Reaches of the Farmington 

He who discovers the work of Nature unaided bj^ man, 
just as it has come from the hand of the Creator, has 
seen beauty indeed. Explorers and pathfinders have 
been wonderfully favored. The track of human beings, 
the mark of axe or pick, wheel or hoof, that tells of 
the near presence of man, takes away something of 
the charm which Nature in her solitude must always 
possess. 

Mad River is the clew which, if followed, will take 
you to the busiest place in all the Farmington Valley, 
if not the most beavitiful. Winsted outrivals ancient 
Rome in one respect, for, while Rome was built on 
seven hills, Winsted can boast of well-nigh seventeen. It 
is decidedly a Swiss town, clinging to hillsides which 
rise in every direction. Few of the streets are straight, 
unless one should say that some of them are straight 
up and down. The town is better adapted for coast- 
ing than for automobiling. As in ancient Rome, so 
in Winsted you may hear the plash of water every- 
where. The most excellent water power — the pride of 
the borough — makes possible its supply for drinking 
purposes and its well equipped factories, wherein al- 
most everything is manufactured. The water is stored 
far up in the mountains in an artificially constructed 
reservoir, and in Crystal and Highland Lakes, which 
receive the overflow through a tunnel in the mountains, 
the gift of an enterprising citizen. From Highland 
Lake the water falls near a hundred feet to the level 
of the river, furnishing water power all the way down. 
The course of Mad River determined the windings of 

43 



The Upper Reaches of the Farmington 

^lain Street, which curves about in nearly the shape 
of a horseshoe, ^lills have sprung up along its en- 
tire course. In one of these factories pins enough are 
made in a single week to supply every man, woman 
and child in the United States with one. Others pro- 
duce underclothing to keep people warm, jackknives 
to do their whittling, tools to build their houses, lamps 
to give them light, chairs for them to sit in, household 
hardware to make their homes beautiful, knives and 
forks to eat ^vith, leather to bind their books and help 
to make organ music by furnishing material for the 
bellows, clocks to keep accurate time for them, and when 
time is no more for them shrouds and coffin trimmings 
are produced for their burial. While all this work is 
being done, the water dashing merrily over flumes and 
dams makes blithe music day and night. 

Benevolent citizens have by gifts and bequests for 
their native town made it possible to build churches, 
the Gilbert High School, with its magnificent endow- 
ment of more than a half million dollars; the Gilbert 
Home for Orphaned Children, with an endowment as 
large, or larger — a model institution of its kind; a hos- 
pital with the finest location in the State; two soldiers' 
monuments, and numerous other improvements, of 
which the town is justly proud. From the Soldiers' 
Monument on a hill in the heart of the town a fine 
bronze soldier looks down by day and night, and when 
the darkness comes on the monument is lighted by 
electricity, indicating that the patriotism of a commu- 
nity is a light illuminating the darkest night. Three 

45 



The Upper Reaches of the Farmington 



church edifices of granite, beautiful without and within, 
testify to the faith and works of the people, and that 
they believe that the church is in the world to stay. 
Two public libraries, one at either end of the town, fur- 
nish ample facilities for reading and study. The health- 
fulness of Winsted is borne witness to by the fact 
that in the Second Congregational Church there are 
living at this writing five people who have passed their 
ninetieth birthday — one of them his ninety-eighth — 
whose combined ages are four hundred and sixty-nine 
years. The drives about AVinsted are unsurpassed and 
of wonderful variety. Go in any direction and you 
can make no mistake, whether it is about Highland 
Lake, over the Winchester and Goshen hills to New Bos- 
ton, or through sleepy Colebrook village, or to Norfolk, 
with its beautiful residences and its commanding views. 
Pure air, kaleidoscopic scenery and well cared for roads 
make out of doors life a joy and delight. 

Highland Lake, to which reference has been made, 
lies just above the borough of Winsted, is three miles 
long, and has a charming driveway clear about it. It 
is essentially an Adirondack lake, surrounded by woods 
and hills, with cottages scattered along its shores. Sit- 
ting on the broad veranda of one of these, with the 
moonlight reflected in the water, those words of Byron, 
written of Lake Leman, might apply : 

"Clear placid Highland ! thy contrasted lake. 
With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing 
^Vhich warns me with its stillness, to forsake 
Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring." 

46 




LITCHFIELD COUNTY 
SKETCHES 



IV 

Two Country Parsons 

A VOLUME could easily be written on the Litch- 
field County ministers, and if the work w^as as in- 
teresting as the men are it would be exceedingly 
readable. These two men, whom I have called coun- 
try parsons, lived and wrought in the little town of 
Bethlehem, eight miles south of Litchfield. Bethlehem 
had then within its borders but one church, and never 
ought to have had but one where there are now three. 
The population of the town was, by the last census, 
only 576, and has been decreasing for a number of 
decades. Why New England people should economize 
on everything else and be wasteful in religious mat- 
ters must forever remain a mystery, unless we say that 
it is because of their love of liberty to worship God in 
the way they choose. There ought to be a Protestant 
Pope whose business should be to consolidate churches 
in the small towns and villages. This would be for the 
glory of God and the good of men. 

Those who named this hill town Bethlehem prob- 
ably had the Bethlehem of Judea in mind, since the 
region adjacent, now Washington and Roxbury, was 
once called Judea. The landscape is restful in the 

47 



Two Country Parsons 

extreme, and the Woodbury hills to the south roll away 
much as the hills do about ancient Bethlehem. Five 
streets converge at a triangular green, where stood the 
original meeting house with its "sabba day houses." In 
these last the congregation on a Winter's day thawed 
itself out in front of the open fire and drank its flip. 
This church called, in the year 1740, a young man then 
twenty-one years old, named Joseph Bellamy. Young 
Bellamj^ had been preaching for them about two years, 
having been graduated from Yale College at the age of 
sixteen, in the class of 1735. His salary was fixed at 
ninety pounds and fifty cords of wood a year. Besides 
this he cultivated quite a large farm, which was a part 
of the church holdings. To assist him in the care of 
this he had a negro servant who was undoubtedly a 
slave, as slavery still existed in Connecticut at the time. 
Some of Mr. Bellamy's parishioners complained that 
their minister used words which the people could not un- 
derstand, and suggested a simpler vocabular^^ "Why," 
said their learned pastor, "everybody can understand 
me." To prove it he called in his negro servant and 
said, "Pompey, could you draw an inference?" Now, 
"inference" was one of the learned words to which they 
objected. The colored man stood respectfully with 
cap in hand and, rubbing his woolly head, replied, 
"Massa Bellamy, the old mare draw it if de tugs hold." 
It was this same old negro who was asked which was 
the greater preacher. Dr. Bellamy or Dr. Backus. His 
answer was, "Dey both great preachers, but Massa Bel- 
lamy he make God greater." 

49 



Two Country Parsons 

Immediately after the coming of Bellamy to Beth- 
lehem was the Great Awakening, as it was called, fol- 
lowed by the visit of Wliitefield to New England. This 
yoimg minister, hardly old enough to grow a beard, 
threw himself into the work witli flaming zeal, for he 
was a man of fervid piety. Not only did he lead in the 
evangelistic work in his own parish, but in two years 
he preached four hundred and fifty-eight times in two 
hundred and thirteen different places in New England. 
He was a pupil and friend of Jonathan Edwards, and 
was a man of majestic presence, expressive voice, vivid 
imagination and dramatic style. Having also a well- 
trained mind, logical and persuasive, he soon became 
famous as a preacher and an able writer on theological 
sid)jects. He was ranked by some with Wliitefield 
himself in his power over an educated audience. A 
triumvirate of great preachers was often named in the 
same breath — Edwards, Hopkins and Bellamy. Betli- 
lehem soon became the home of the first theological 
scliool in New England, taught in the home of Bel- 
lamy. Young men came from far and near to sit at 
his feet, and these afterward became the leaders of 
theological thought in their generation. Bellamy had 
a clear insight of religious truth, and was a forceful 
teacher in both the pulpit and the classroom. Some 
of his terse sayings are still told in Bethlehem, having 
been handed down with the traditions of the place. A 
student read a sermon which was quite voluminous, 
whereupon Dr. Bellamy asked him if he expected to 
prepare any more sermons. The young man in aston- 

50 



Tw'o Countr}^ Parsons 

ishment informed him that he did, and ventured to in- 
quire why such a question should be asked. "Oh," said 
the doctor, "I was onl}^ wondering what you were going 
to put into them." At another time a number of his 
students were about to leave him, and had gotten into 
the stage coach at the door, when the doctor came rush- 
ing out, telling them that he had forgotten something 
very important. They returned, and when they were 
seated, expectant of some important deliverance on the 
work upon which they were about to enter, he said, 
"Young gentlemen, when it rains, let it rain. You are 
excused." Well were it for all young ministers, and 
old ones, too, if they would remember those words. 

The sermons of Dr. Bellamy give one little idea of 
this side of the man. They rather hide his individuality 
and keep out of sight some of the marked peculiari- 
ties that characterized him as a preacher and teacher. 
Here, as always, it was the man behind the sermon that 
made it eiFective. 

In the days when doctors of divinity were very rare 
even in our large cities, and almost unknown in coun- 
try places, Aberdeen College, in Scotland, conferred 
upon this Bethlehem pastor the degree of D. D., be- 
cause of the great learning shown in his theological 
writings. This shows not only the estimate put upon 
the man by the religious thinkers of the times, but how 
widely read were the writings of this minister of an 
obscure town in Litchfield Countv, Connecticut. About 
this time, or soon after, the only Presbyterian church 
in New York City gave Dr. Bellamy a call to become 

51 



Two Country Parsons 

its pastor, and, having failed the first time, afterward 
repeated the call. But it was unable to draw him 
away from his country pulpit, his students, his farm 
and his study, Avhere he was engaged in his great 
thoughts. His fame as a preacher brought people from 
far and near to hear him, and many students to sit 
at his feet. Take it all in all, it is safe to say that Dr. 
Bellamy was the greatest preacher the county has ever 
had settled within its boundaries. 

There came one day to this school of the prophets 
at Bethlehem a young man of brilliant intellect and 
fine presence. He was no less a personage than Aaron 
Burr, the son of President Aaron Burr of Prince- 
ton College, himself a warm friend of Dr. Bellamy. 
He could hardly have come to study for the min- 
istry, but was undoubtedly sent by his father with the 
hojie that the young man might be led by the famous 
teacher to see and accept the claims of the Christian 
faith. It has been hinted that such were the audacity 
and self-confidence of Aaron Burr that he thought to 
show Dr. Bellamy that his faith was groundless. The 
result was that the pupil did not change the faith of 
the preacher nor the preacher win his pupil to accept 
the claims of Christianity. If this last had been ac- 
complished, how different had been the future of this 
brilliant young man, saving his name from infamy and 
his country fi*om this blot on the fair pages of her 
history ! 

Dr. Joseph Bellamy served the chiu'ch in Bethlehem 
for fifty years, resisting all the persuasions of those 

52 



T^vo Country Parsons 

who would have his hglit shine in more conspicuous 
places, A hilltop country town was high enough for 
him. Dr. Bellamy and the Rev. John Langdon, third 
in the pastorate of this church, are the only ministers 
buried in the cemetery at Bethlehem. All others have 
chosen to listen to the invitations to larger fields of 
service, or have been dismissed by the church, desirous 
of a new voice in the pulpit. 

The other country parson, who came on the death 
of Dr. Bellamy, in 1790, was Azel Backus, Yale, 1787. 
This was his only pastorate, since he began his preach- 
ing here, and was called from Bethlehem to become the 
first president of Hamilton College, Clinton, New York, 
in 1812. Dr. Backus was given the degree of Doctor 
of Divinitj^ by Princeton in 1810. How great an honor 
this was is seen by the fact that before 1818 Yale Col- 
lege had conferred this degree on not more than two 
or three individuals. This parson was a brilliant clas- 
sical scholar, and to help in the support of his large 
and growing family, and assist young men into the 
Christian ministry, he established a classical school in 
his own house. When Dr. Backus left the town and 
church, the school passed into the hands of the Rev. 
John Langdon, who kept it until his death, in 1830. 
JNIr. Langdon was also a rare scholar and a successful 
teacher. To him was sent Henry Ward Beecher, from 
Litchfield, at the age of twelve years. Bethlehem was 
thus an educational centre of considerable note for nearly 
one hundred years. 



53 




i * /- 



'M'~^ I 



Two Country Parsons 

I3r. Backus was a different type of man from his 
predecessor. He was not so great a preacher, nor so 
eminent a theologian. He was pre-eminently a scholar, 
although no mean preacher. As a teacher he inspired 
his pupils with the loftiest ideals, and turned many into 
the ministry. Dr. Backus was a wit, dry and caustic, 
and these witticisms still live in Bethlehem, where the 
writer has often heard them repeated. A farmer 
brought a load of hay to the parsonage barn, the cart 
drawn by four pairs of oxen, the leaders being a 
pair of yearlings. Dr. Backus looked them over and 
asked why those little fellows were put on. "To draw," 
said the farmer. The reply came quick and sharp: 
"Draw? Why. they could not draw 'Watts' Hymns for 
Infant Minds' down hill." When asked afterward if 
he said any such thing, he replied, "Very likely; it 
sounds just like me." When told that that part of the 
town known as Carmel Hill, which was notoriously bad, 
had been up to some new deviltry, the doctor remarked, 
"They had best fence off that neighborhood and have a 
little hell of their own." Dr. Backus began his work 
at Hamilton in a vigorous and hopeful way, but after 
a service of only four years was gathered to his fathers 
at the age of fifty-two. It is admitted, however, that 
he left his impress on the college, and greatly helped to 
make it the power for good which it has been for nearly 
a century. 

What privileges the people of this little hill town of 
Bethlehem had in those days, in the hearing of these brill- 
iant and learned men, and in having these princely schol- 

55 



Two Country Parsons 

ars and world-famous preachers live among them! One 
can but wonder if they appreciated them, or often found 
them dry and uninteresting. They are all gone, pas- 
tors and people. The old meeting house in which their 
voices rang out these sublime Gospel truths is also gone, 
and a new one which is now old has taken its place. The 
pulpit in which they preached remains, and the chair 
with its wide arm in which Dr. Bellamy sat and wrote out 
his great sermons on "Divine Sovereignty" and "The 
Freedom of the Will." Do pulpits of pine and oak 
last longer than people, with their strength of intellect, 
aspirations after the unattainable and dreams of im- 
mortality? How pertinent the words of the ^Master, 
"God is not a God of the dead, but the living." So we 
may believe that these two country parsons still live and 
enjoy their good parishioners, whom they led in green 
pastures and beside the still Avaters. 




56 



Map or Litchfield Co. Conn. 




Cop/nght /908. by Cerl Stcecliel 



County Seals indicated Ihu 

T..vns W Stations on Ra.lroads .nd.oalej thus RoxburySla. 

To»ns and Villages not or> Railroads indicated t'nM-.Roi'burjl 



LITCHFIELD COUNTY 
SKETCHES 



The Finest Drive in the World 

WHERE shall one find it, and who shall be the 
judge ? If it seemed the finest in youth, would 
it continue to be so later in life ? Then, too, do 
not conditions change with the changing years ^ The 
estimate which one puts upon such a thing as a drive 
must necessarily depend partly upon ever-varying con- 
ditions. No one thinks the road a pleasant one over 
which he is driving to see a sick friend. The souFs 
moods, as well as those of the sky and landscape, help 
to make or mar the ways by which we go. 

The title of this article, "The Finest Drive in the 
World," is a borrowed one, and has oftenest been ap- 
plied to that most wonderfully picturesque road along 
the shores of the Bay of Naples from Sorrento to 
Castel-a-Mare. There you have well-nigh perfect con- 
ditions. The roadbed is hard and smooth, the perfec- 
tion of engineering skill, winding through Italian villas 
and under beetling crags, with orange groves and flow- 
er gardens on every hand. Below lies sparkling the 
blue-green water of the Bay of Naples, with Capri, 
BaijE and Posilipo in the hazy distance. Before you 

57 



The Finest Drive in the World 

rises Vesuvius, with its turbaned summit, white by day 
and glowing at night — a pillar of cloud and a pillar of 
fire. Over all is the blue sky of sunny Italy. That 
is a drive which, if once taken, will surely never be for- 
gotten. It will atone for some of the ugliness and dirt 
which are to be found in Naples itself. As a stranger 
in a strange land, there are, however, no associations 
connected with it, and so an essential element is want- 
ing. To get the very most out of it, one must have 
loved every hill, mountain and stream from boyhood; 
he must have seen, as he has often driven over it, sun- 
sets and sunrises, mountains and bay. Winter frosts and 
Summer harvests ; he must have had a heart as full as a 
bobolink's, and a friend by his side whose presence irra- 
diated and glorified all things. Only one's native land 
can furnish for him "the finest drive in the world." 
Possibly we may find it in Litchfield County. 

One might start from Winsted, in the northeast part 
of the county, and follow up the valley of Mad River 
for four or five miles, along a shady, winding drive- 
way beside the noisy, businesslike stream which all the 
way seems babbling boastfully of w^iat it will do when 
it gets to town. Farther along the way shall lead 
one between laurel-crowned hillsides, for the drive 
should be taken in June, most lovely of months. What- 
ever may be the national flower, that of Litchfield 
County is the mountain laurel. The Litchfield County 
University Club has appropriately put it upon its seal, 
and its stately blossoms adorn the club's June banquet 
at "Whitehouse," in Norfolk. The pink and white 

59 



The Finest Drive in the World 

blossoms appear everpvhere, hiding in the woods and 
straying over the pastures. Here a large clump stands 
out in the open, backed by pines or hemlock. Yonder 
the side of the hill is covered with them, standing in 
groups and singles, as if they had been carefully 
planted by a landscape gardener. At a turn in the road 
an opening is discovered in the woods, where there are 
acres of laurel, looking like an orchard in full bloom, 
with the added beauty which the waxy green leaves give 
the gay flowers. This common roadway — if a country 
road could be called common — has become a royal drive- 
way, through the king's gardens, and the edges of the 
silver lakes, reflecting their beauty, give to them a double 
existence like our own — the material and the spiritual. 
It is permitted us to think that the flowers that adorn 
the earth are like all things here — shadows of the heav- 
enly. Efarth's hard conditions cramp and blight them, 
but in the heavenly world we shall see them in their ideal 
state and condition. The discoveries and improvements 
which men are inaking in flowers and fruits are the way 
we have of finding out how to do things after God's 
patterns, that is all. We do not make things; we only 
discover them. 

We have well-nigh lost our road, while following one 
of the soul's pathways, and must get back again to good 
hard dirt and gravel, packed down by hoofs and wheels. 
Had we the time to climb this fence, cross over yonder 
brook, which is saying, "There are trout liere," and ex- 
plore that thick swamp just in the edge of the woods, 
we should find another flower rarely found in our State. 

60 



The Finest Drive in the World 

It is the Khododendron maximum, or great laurel. The 
kind-hearted farmer who lives near that swamp used to 
bring its snow-white blossoms to the little daughter, 
along with the weekly supply of eggs, and called them 
"rosydendrons." It secludes itself in remote swamps, 
and its whereabouts is known to only a few of its lovers. 
It is of interest to note that both of these New England 
wild flowers have been transplanted in Old England, to 
adorn some of the estates of the nobility. 

Getting back to our carriage we steadily ascend until 
we come to Norfolk, thirteen hundred feet above the 
sea level, and as much as thirteen thousand "celestial 
diameters" above the level of the dirty cities. Norfolk 
has the highest railway station in the State, and by far 
the most beautiful. Without it is granite, and within 
decorated with pictures which would adorn a drawing 
room. With a library of perfect appointments, an ar- 
tistic and commodious gymnasium, golf links and ten- 
nis courts, and withal a cultivated and refined people, 
Norfolk has justly become the centre of a most charm- 
ing Summer colony. Once each year the college men 
of the county are the guests of the founders of the 
Litchfield University Club, at their beautiful home, 
where they are entertained with lavish hospitality. Will 
not such perfect conditions as the Norfolk people enjoy 
make heaven less to be longed for? A traveller, it is 
said, once asked for a ticket to Heaven, and was given 
one to Norfolk, to his entire satisfaction. One can easily 
believe this to be true. 



61 



The Finest Drive in the World 

Our way now leads to the south, along woodsy roads 
and over sliarp hills, through North Goshen, past Ivy 
^Mountain Tower, along the East Street through creamy 
Goshen, where, from the very backbone of the county, 
the Catskills are to be seen toward the sunset, and the 
Talcott Mountains toward the sunrising. Now we are 
in classic Litchfield, where the first law school in the 
United States flourished under Judges Reeves and 
Gould, and where Henry Ward Beecher first saw the 
light. The streets are overarched with stately elms and 
maples, and bordered with old-fashioned houses and 
new-fashioned residences. Flower gardens and lawns, 
hotels and public buildings, all proclaim that we are in 
a much-loved town. Driving down the main street to 
the south, we catch the first sight of Bantam Lake, lying 
in the midst of cultivated farms. The highway from 
Litchfield to ^Morris is for the most part in sight of this 
beautiful sheet of water. At INIorris you will pass the 
site of the old INIorris Academy, the first school of 
its kind in this part of the country, where many young 
men were educated who afterward filled positions of 
responsibility in the great world. Here, too, the eye 
can sweep a wide horizon on every side, for these are 
the hill towns of Connecticut. Southward still your 
road leads you, always high up on the ridge, with green 
wavy hills stretching away on either hand, and rich farm 
lands with white farm houses and capacious barns. Three 
miles south of Morris is Bethlehem, once the home of 
Backus and Bellamy, tw^o country parsons of wide fame, 
and of the classical school founded by the one, and the 

63 



The Finest Drive in the Worid 

theological school held under the roof of the other. This 
village street, like most of those in Litchfield County, is 
long, wide and shady. The roads leading from Bethle- 
hem to ^^'oodbu^^' are all of them a ^e^'elation of beauty. 
Whichever one you take, you wiQ be persuaded is the 
finest. Xonawaug Falls, on the valley road, have more 
than a local reputation and make a most delightful 
place for the noontime luncheon. AVoodbur)' is \\ell in 
the southern part of the county, and reminds one of 
Strat ford-on -Avon, so quiet and dreamy is its beaut}'. 
Oremaug Park, just above the village, and the Pom- 
peraug ^^alley, v^ith lush meadows and wa\-ing green 
fields, tempt the traveller to hnger and spend the Sum- 
mer days hi this \ ale of contentment. Turning now to 
tlie northward, our road winds up the ^'alley through 
Hotchkissville and Wickipeema, and over the hills to 
\Vashin^on Green. In the early days this region was 
called Judea, and well named it was, "for as the 
moimtains are round about Jerusalem," so they are round 
about ^Vashington. This hill to>Mi ^^'as made famous 
years ago by JNIr. Frederick Gunn and his school, which 
was called "7'he Gunnery." It was immortalized by J. 
G. Holland as the "Bird's Nest." ]SIr. Gunn was a won- 
derful school teacher, and sent out into the v\'orld many 
distinguished pupils. One of them — the lamented and 
brilhant Hamilton Gibson — ^afterv\ard returned and 
made bis home in Washirjgton. United States Senator 
Piatt, a native of this same hill town, loved it so 'well that 
he came back here for his vacations, and warn gathered to 
bis fathers amidst the scenes he had lo\'ed in his boyhood. 

64 



The Finest Drive in the World 

Homelike, modern houses blend with the old-fashioned 
Colonial ones, with their white paint and green blinds, 
just as Summer visitors and old-time residents here 
mix cordially together, forming an ideally delightful 
community. 

From Washington to Xew Preston any road you 
choose to take will prove itself the most beautiful, 
wliether by the valley up Bee Brook, or through Cal- 
houn Street over the bills. Taking tbis latter way, the 
backward look ^^•ill repay you, for there are glories be- 
hind as well as about you. 

New Preston is twins, one living on tlie hill, the other 
on the stream which flows down from AVaramaug. 
Horace Bushnell and President Day, of Yale College, 
were born in Xew Preston. There was an old academy 
here, which was presided over by Gould Whittlesey, and 
from its doors many youth went to college. He it was 
who used to say, when tired of trying to make some dull 
pupil understand, "If I had my life to live o\'er again, 
I w^ould not be a pedagogue." His scholars loved him, 
however, and ^^•hen his teaching work was done they 
came back from all over the country to an anniversary, 
to testify of the love which they had for the old mas- 
ter. ]Mr. Whittlesey inspired his pupils with a desire 
for knowledge. Another schoolmaster has labored here 
for long years, and in his home-school has shaped the 
lives of multitudes of boys. ^Ir. Henry Upson has 
served the church as preacher, his country as chaplain 
during the war, and the cause of education in the laying 
of the foundations of character and learning in his 

65 



The Finest Drive in the World 

pupils. Xot many men have wrought in church, State 
and college hetter than he has. Xorthward again our 
way leads us, along the shores of Lake Waramaug, with 
its beautiful Summer homes and background of hills 
and mountains, over these last into Kent, up the Hou- 
satonic River to the Cornwalls, over more mountains to 
Sharon the restful, remote from the noise of railway 
and trolley. Those wlio first came hither to make their 
homes must have had in mind that other Vale of Sharon, 
stretching along under the mountains of Judea. Un- 
dulating, cultivated hills roll away toward the horizon, 
while quiet lakes sleep in their soft embrace. From 
Sharon to Lakeville the roadway is the best, through a 
rich farming region and a landscape ever changing and 
pleasing to the eye. We are noAv in the lake region of 
the county, where Wononscopomuc reflects ]Mount Riga, 
and Washining and Washinee serve as mirrors for Bald 
^Mountain. Salisbury is the place of schools — Hotch- 
kiss and the Austin for boys and the Taconic for girls. 
As you drive along its elm-shaded streets the sweet 
chimes from the Scoville Library strike the hour. It is 
no wonder that the Shepherd of Salisbury tends his 
scattered flock year after year, resisting the allurements 
of other larger sheepfolds. One cannot blame him if 
]ie prefers to conthiue Bishop of Salisbury, rather than 
to become a Canon of Westminster. Salisbury, like 
many another town in our mountain county, is a hard 
place to go away from. Being very near to the land 
of Canaan may have something to do with it. Through 
that land with its "green fields" and "swelling floods" 

67 



The Finest Drive in the World 

we take our homeward way until we come again to Xor- 
folk. Standing by the meeting house and l<x)king off 
toward the sunset, if you do not say that you have taken 
the finest drive in the world, then immetliately you will 
be countefl out from the select 'four hundr^r' ^^ho were 
bom in Litchfield Countv. 




SS 





Si 



X3 



LITCHFIELD COUNTY 
SKETCHES 



VI 

White Roses and Clover Blooms 

HOW true it is, as ^Ir. Beecher once said, that men 
do not feed entirely through their mouths ! Eyes, 
ears and souls must all the time be fed, if the life 
is to be a healthful one. The dweller amid such beauties 
as our beloved county affords may indeed feed the high- 
est in him, if he only will. There is hardly a home that 
has not its hardy roses, and clover fields are everywhere, 
while apple and cherry blooms in their season make the 
landscape beautiful and the world delightsome. Fa- 
miliar odors that awaken holiest memories float in the 
air on the June morning, wafted from the old white 
rose bush, standing by the well-worn threshold of the 
door through which childhood's feet often passed. We 
see again a dear face bending over us, to give a part- 
ing kiss, along with a rose from the nearby bush. We 
hear aerain a voice — was it not the sweetest in the world 
to us? — bidding us good-bye, as we started off with din- 
ner pail to the old red school house by the mountain. All, 
what pictures the fragrance of rose and syringa brings 
before the mind, and how the eyes moisten as we be- 
hold them! We see it all again — the old gray house 
with low slanting roof, the well-sweep which brought up 
the coldest water to quench our thirst, the great barn 

71 



White Roses and (Clover Blooms 

with the swallows darting in and out, the orchard stretch- 
ing down the slope with cool, inviting shadows, and the 
sunset's light upon the distant liilltops. We see again 
the wide-stretching clover lields, the delight of our boy- 
hood, so aptly described by Sidney I^anier: 

"Up the sky 
The hesitating moon slow trembles on. 
Faint as a new-washed soul but lately up 
From out a buried body. Far about, 
A hundred slopes in hundred fantasies 
Most ravishingly run, so smooth of curve 
That I but seem to see the fluent plain 
Rise toward a rain of clover-blooms, as lakes 
Pout gentle mounds of plashment up to meet 
Big shower-drops. Now the little winds as bees 
Bowing the blooms come wandering where I lie 
Mixt soul and body with the clover tufts. 
Fight on my spirit, give from wing and thigh 
Rich pollens and divine sweet irritants 
To every nerve^ and freshly make report 
Of inmost Nature's secret inborn thought 
Unto some soul of sense within my frame 
That owns each cognizance of the outlying Ave, 
And sees, hears, tastes, smells, touches, all in one." 

There is certainly a blessed gospel in these sweet per- 
fumes, distilled in Nature's laboratory. What would 
the world be without them, we often ask. We might 
well query what men and women would be without them. 
As children they fed upon daisy banks and clover tields. 
Their chubby hands held a bimch of "posies" almost as 
soon as the proverbial rattle. They early began to love 

72 



White Roses and Clover Blooms 

sweet odors from flower blooms. Nothing is more com- 
mon than to see a child with his nose deep in amongst 
the flower petals, like some bright golden-throated 
humming bird. These are recording certain impres- 
sions upon heart and brain. The eye is being trained 
to love the beautiful and hate the ugly. The perfume 
of white roses and clover blooms is stencilling certain 
truths upon the inmost soul. The memory works 
through the nose, as well as through the eyes and ears. 
Thus the gospel of the gentle and the innocent is 
preached by these angels with vari-colored wings. That 
gospel will not soon be forgotten, even in the midst of 
the world's sin and confusion of tongues. 

The child who is to be an author ought to spend the 
days of childhood in the atmosphere of books, they tell 
us. The boy or girl who is to be an artist should live 
amongst the famous pictures of the creators of the Gold- 
en Age of Art, and amid the grandest works of God. 
These associations are formative of tastes, appetites and 
aptitudes. They hang the soul's halls and chambers 
with beautiful pictures, and line its walls with books. 
How much more, when you would produce a man or 
woman of fine mould and pure life, in touch with all 
the best things, swayed by the memories of flowers and 
birds and sweet and subtile odors, ought you to bring 
the child up with rose gardens, clover fields and cherry 
blossoms. These things must pull strongly on the cords 
of the heart, and keep many a man and woman from 
the baser life, when temptations are strong upon them. 
Such surroundings help in making character, but are 

78 



White Roses and Clover HIooiiis 

not necessarily saviors of men. We should, however, 
learn to use them for just what they are worth, and no 
more. 

The clover blooms, like the swan's song, are the sweet- 
est in death. Behold the clover field when the mowers 
have laid the white and crimson heads low^ on a Summer 




"At evening lime it lllls the old burn.' 



morning ! The bees went down with them, and still con- 
tinue to search for honey, buzzing about amongst the 
stalks. As the sun mounts higher, the boy comes ^vhist- 
ling afield, and tosses the clover blooms with his fork, 
spreading them evenly over the meadow. Now the air 
is full of sweetest and most bewitching odors. Blended 

74 



White Roses and Clover Blooms 

with the fragrance of the newly mown hay, the scent of 
the clover blooms seems intensified, as that of rose leaves 
in the rose jar. At evening time it fills the old barn, is 
breathed out through the wide open doors, and clings to 
one's garments, as he takes a refreshing drink at the old 
well. The delicious fragrance of the flowers and the new- 
mown hay is as free as the air, for all the air is laden 
with it. You need not own the field or plant the rose 
bushes, but may enjoy your neighbor's if you will. 
Blessed is the man, however, who plants rose bushes in 
his garden and sows clover in his fields for the bees and 
men. To make the world more beautiful is to help in 
making characters more beautiful. 




75 



ii.il II liifite. 




LITCHFIELD COUNTY 
SKETCHES 



VII 

A Deserted Farm 

ALL about the county there are deserted farms. 
They have gone back to Nature, aside from a 
stretch of meadow or a bit of arable land that 
some one cultivates on shares. You shall see the crum- 
bling chimney, a clump of lilac bushes, some straggling 
spotted lilies by the old well, and a cellar half filled with 
rotten timber. Here is the smoothly worn stone door- 
step, pressed by the feet of three generations, and sitting 
down upon it and looking off toward the Delectable 
Mountains the imagination restores the old homestead 
to its former glory. 

The house was a story and a half high, large and 
rambling, with a huge chimney in the centre. This was 
built parth' of stone and partly of brick, and had in the 
kitchen an immense fireplace. The children loved to 
stand within its capacious arch at night and see the stars. 
Colonies of chimney swalloAvs were at home in it during 
the summer, and the whirr of their wings could be heard 
by day, and the soft call of the mother bird to her young 
at night. The snow drove down the chimney and made 
the fire sputter, while the wind made eddies on the 

77 



A Deserted Farm 

hearth, miniature tornadoes, to the dehght of the chil- 
dren. The kitchen was long and narrow, and was the 
li^'ing room for the large family. On the front of the 
house were a sitting room and a parlor, with an entrance 
hall between them, and opening oiF the kitchen a pantry 
and a bedroom. The sitting room was used for the cold 
winter evenings and for receiving friendly calls, while 
the parlor was opened only on state occasions. Both 
rooms held diminutive stoves, with large heating capac- 
ity. Running round chimney was a favorite amuse- 
ment, when the cousins came on a visit. Through 
kitchen, parlor, hall, and sitting room the lads chased 
the lassies, and had their reward if not too bashful to 
take it. In the parlor there were a funeral and a wed- 
ding, when a son went away to the home prepared for 
him, and a daughter to make one for herself. The 
house swarmed with life, for there were ten children 
who called it home, and many cousins who lived near by. 
What shoutings and merrymakings were here; what 
hopes and fears and glad anticipations! This old cellar 
was filled with potatoes, apples and other good things. 
Those now scrubby trees down yonder used to be laden 
with russets, greenings and seek-no-farthers in the old 
days. How they welcomed the boys and girls, as they 
came with baskets, bags and barrels to gather the Au- 
tumn store! Where the weeds and brambles grow so 
luxuriously was the garden, containing not only the 
usual vegetables, but sage, thyme and sweet marjoram. 
Down through the centre of it, by the side of the walk, 
grew old-fashioned flowers, pinks, bachelor buttons, 

78 



A Deserted Farm 

four-o'clocks, verbenas, stocks and many others known 
only to the mother of the house, who loved them 
all and cared for them as she did for her cliildren. As 
you swung the garden gate there was a bed of fennel 
— "meeting seed"^ — on one side, with caraway, while 
on the other there was tansy. They are all gone but 
the tansy. Bravely it blossoms still out there by that 
broken down stone wall. Some plants and shrubs cling- 
to the soil better than men and women. The great world 
does not tempt them so much. 

This farm was rocky, but by no means sterile. It 
used to produce finely under its owner's careful culti- 
vation. It fed and clothed and edvicated ten children, 
and in the mean time paid for itself. When its owner 
came to it with his wife and five children he was obliged 
to go into debt heavily in order to possess a home for 
his wife and growing family. How it was paid for 
will be a mystery, only in this instance Ave know it was 
done honestly. The father rented a pew in the meet- 
ing house four miles away, dressed his children suit- 
abl}^ for meeting and for school, gave to missions at 
home and abroad, paid his bills, and after long years 
of hard, self-denying labor cleared the farm of debt. 
It was done on the cooperative plan. The mother was 
cook, butter and cheese maker, dressmaker and tailor. 
It was no unusual thing for her to make a garment 
for one of the children after they had retired for the 
night, and that by hand, for sewing machines were then 
unknown. Children by the age of nine or ten be- 
came bread winners. They not only helped indoors 

79 



A Deserted Farm 

and out, but actually did many things whereby money 
was earned. In the Summer they gathered mint and 
herbs for the familj^ doctor, and in the Autumn picked 
up chestnuts and walnuts, which were sold to buy boots 
and shoes. During the long Winter evenings, when 
the lessons were disposed of, they put on hooks and 
eyes. These were gotten at the country store — a bag 
of hooks and a bag of eyes and a bundle of cards. Some 
were stuck on and some sewed on. Gathered about the 
long table, with a pile of hooks and another of eyes in 
front of them, they "ran races," to see who could put 
them on the fastest. On Saturdays there were stints 
to be done before sliding down hill or going off on 
some looked and longed for excursion. The table was 
supplied in this way with tea and sugar, and the chil- 
dren with many articles of clothing. Habits of in- 
dustrj'^ were thus early formed. Life was not all a 
play spell. They early knew the worth of things, 
albeit it was at times at the expense of going without 
them. Having earned shoes, they were more interest- 
ed in taking care of them. There was no piano in the 
house, there were no music lessons, no skates, and no 
sleds except the home-made ones. The boy never owned 
a sled until he went away from home, save perhaps one 
made either by himself or his father. Playthings there 
were none, save those that were given from without the 
home, or were of home construction. A hard life, you 
say? Yes, it was a hard life in a way, but of necessity. 
Still, there were wonderful compensations. The dear 
parents would not have chosen to have gone without so 

80 



A Deserted Farm 

many things, or have had their children go without them, 
but they would pay their debts, secure an education for 
their children, give them religious advantages, and 
themselves have the luxury of fulfilling the Master's 
command to preach the Gospel to every creature. Not 
being able to go themselves, they would send. They 
had to work, and they wasted no sympathy on their 
children who had to labor. 

Some one may ask how it was that this farm came 
to be abandoned. It came about in a natural way. The 
children grew up and began going away from home. 
The boys went to the academy, and two of them to 
college, where they paid their own way for the most 
part. The other son preferred a trade to the farm, 
and the father said that if the boys did not care 
to work the land he would not keep it. So it was 
sold, and the family that still remained moved into the 
village, near to church and postoffice. Then there came 
swift changes in the old homestead. The land was not 
so carefully tilled by the next owner. After a while he 
died, and the widow rented out land and sold the hay, 
a sure way to run down the best of farms. Then the 
house was closed Winters, and finally the owner moved 
away to live with one of her married children. It was 
rented afterward to one of those gypsy farmers who 
move almost annually. Without repairs the house soon 
became untenantable, stood with open doors and broken 
window panes, was occupied now and then by some 
tramp who made his coffee on the hearth and cursed 
his luck in the old kitchen where the loved household 

81 



A Deserted Farm 

was wont to kneel at family devotions. And so it went 
on, and storms and snows and rains all had a hand at 
its destruction, until the farm was sold for a few hun- 
dred dollars, in place of thousands that it once brought. 
The last owner cut off the beautiful timber for logs 
and firewood, and then abandoned it. He comes on a 
Sunday to look after and bring salt to some cattle that 
he is pasturing in the fields, grown up to brush so that 
he finds the lierd with difficulty. He has stretched a 
barbed wire along the top of the tumble-down stone wall, 
felled some brush and patched up a line fence, and gone 
his way. 

Tlie old farm lives in the memory of its past, and 
holds dear the scenes of other days, when its lovers and 
friends made it to blossom and bring forth abundant- 
ly. Its pleasure now, aside from thinking of the past, 
is to nestle and nourish every living thing, to welcome 
the dewy mornings and the rosy sunsets from its hill- 
top, to live in the songs of the birds and the abundant 
wild vegetation, wliich, wandering out from stone wall 
sides and fence corners, is taking possession of the soil. 
And the old farm is glad that anything is willing, con- 
tent and happy to stay upon it; that the birds and the 
wild flowers and the berries make it their home; that 
Summer sunshine and AVinter's warm blanket of snow 
still abide with it; for God does not abandon the old 
farm. ^^ 



83 




LITCHFIELD COUNTY 
SKETCHES 



VIII 

The Old Red School House 

THE historian inquiring into the reasons for the 
intellectual accomplishments and public service 
of the men and women of Litchfield County dur- 
ing the nineteenth century will find one of the most 
potent in the old Red School House. For the most part 
their education was begun and completed therein. On 
its hard plank benches they sat during their ABC 
period, and at its desks wrought upon their arithmetic, 
grammar and geography. It was kindergarten, pri- 
mary grammar school and academy all in one. The 
little ones "toed the crack" while they spelled words of 
one syllable, and the grown up boys declaimed from the 
floor in front of the desk, 

"Stand, the ground's j^oiir own, my braves," 

or Fitz-Greene Halleck's immortal words, 

"At midnight, in his guarded tent, 

The Turk lay dreaming of the hour 
When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent. 
Should tremble at his power." 

The very bashful young man, tall and overgrown, 
embarrassed beyond all control, found himself ap- 

85 



The Old Red School House 

preaching nearer and nearer to the stove, until his 
hands, stretched out in a sort of despair, clutching at a 
straw, came near embracing the stovepipe. Those patri- 
otic declamations, how they fired the soul; what visions 
of battlefields, and heroes, and statesmen! As we de- 
claimed Webster's reply to Haynes in the United States 
Senate, or those words of the eloquent Patrick Henry, 
our souls expanded with the inspiring thoughts, and we 
preferred death to the loss of liberty. These declama- 
tions of the district school did much to impress upon 
the minds of the pupils the worthy literature of the past. 
In my own case, I formed a taste for the best poetry 
and prose in that way. The reading books were care- 
fully made up of selections from the best authors. The 
Bible, too, was read every morning, or, more properly, 
the New Testament. Every scholar had to have a copy 
along with his school books. That was worth something — 
to make that book one of those used in the school, and 
so possessed by every scholar. The Bible as literature 
must have made a profound impression upon the minds 
of those thus reading it in school. Some there were who 
would not read it elsewhere, or hear it often read. 

At this time, of course, the girls had not thought of 
going to college, and the boy who went was almost as 
distinguished as the man who now goes in search of the 
North Pole. Such breadth of education required, of 
course, genius in the teacher. It should be said, how- 
ever, that the ungraded school of those early days in 
the country districts of our county was virtually divided 
into two grades by the Summer and Winter terms. In 

86 



The Old Red School House 

the Summer the little folks all went, do\^ai to the abece- 
darians, while the older ones helped on the farm or 
about the house. The girls had the advantage over the 
boys, for many of them could have both the Summer 
and Winter terms. The lad of twelve or even younger 
had only the Winter months for his education. The 
school held from December to jNIarch, inclusive, for the 
Winter term, and about twelve weeks in the Summer; 
possibly longer if the school money held out. 

The old Red School House which the writer has in 
mind stood within eight miles of the county seat, shel- 
tered by a mountain on the northwest and within easy 
distance of the Shepaug River. Before it flowed a trout 
brook, with its swimming holes, while an old orchard 
covered the hillside in the rear. The building was low 
and roomy, with entry ways, and dark wood closets, 
which were used on occasion for bad boys or girls. 
Around three sides, under the windows, ran a wide desk 
decorated with the jackknives and the ink of genera- 
tions of scholars. Parallel with the desks were backless 
benches. While writing or studying the pupil sat at the 
desk facing the windows and the apple trees, while for 
recitation or spelling the feet were swung over the 
bench, and the edge of the desk served as back. The 
modern school desks, with their patent seats, came into 
the county about 1850. Along with these new seats 
came blackboards, maps and modern school apparatus. 
The youngsters sat on low benches made of planks with 
holes bored in them for the legs. These, of course, had 
no backs, and the discomfort of those little tots can easily 



The Old Red School House 

be imagined as they twisted around on those hard 
benches with nothing to do. 

For heating, there was the large open Franklin stove, 
which at times "beat back the frost with tropic heat" 
and at others made it its chief business to smoke. It 
depended upon the wind in part. The older boys and 
girls were equal in age to those who now are in col- 
lege. The common school education was not completed 
until later in life, owing to the fact that for most of 
the older ones it must all be gotten in the Winter months. 
It was customary, too, in beginning a new term with a 
new teacher to begin the textbook at the beginning, 
since the teacher had no other way of knowing where 
each pupil belonged. Then, too, the teacher could show 
great progress in this way under his insti*uction. The 
apt scholar had little advantage over the dull one in 
the ground traversed. There was an element of dis- 
couragement in this for the best pupils. Of course it 
was often true that certain scholars in the school became 
as familiar with the work gone over as the teacher, and 
were thus fitted to teach themselves. Such would do 
what would be called now independent work, mostly in 
mathematics, "hard sums." The Winter's teacher was 
ordinarily a farmer from the neighborhood, who drove 
a number of miles and took care of his stock, or one of 
the grown-up sons, who taught Winters and worked on 
the farm Summers. Such a man had no theory of teach- 
ing save what he had worked out himself. He taught 
oftentimes by main strength. If he was muscular and 
alert, then he would succeed in a way in "keeping 

89 



The Old Red School House 

school/' There were, however, men and women who 
were educational entlmsiasts, who inspired their pupils 
with a genuine thirst for knowledge. It was more than 
likely that this thirst had been unquenched on their part. 
They had heard the river of knowledge as it swept by 
them, but themselves had drunk only of the least riv- 
ulets. So much the more those self-sacrificing men and 
women pointed out the river to their pupils, and encour- 
aged them to drink deeply of its waters. 

The old Red School House remains, however, a mys- 
tery. There were no modern textbooks, no theories of 
education, no grades, no continuity of teaching, by rea- 
son of the frequent changes of teachers. And yet re- 
sults were achieved wholly beyond what would seem 
possible. There was a love for knowledge which was 
historic, perseverance in the face of difficulties, and an 
independence in working out results which was amazing. 
The student was an explorer in unknown regions. Even 
his teacher-guide knew little of that land of knowledge 
through which they were travelling together. Through 
long Winter nights, in front of the crackling logs, they 
worked out their problems independently, afterward 
comparing results. Sometimes the teacher was ahead, 
and sometimes the scholar. They saw only the low 
horizons of history, poetry and literature in the books 
which they had access to, but they were moved to make 
the horizon of to-day the camping place of to-morrow. 
Intellectual shrewdness was developed, and a marvellous 
receptivity. The pupils did not tire of knowledge. It 
always tasted good to them. They knew the cost of an 

90 



The Old Red School House 

education in hard work, and that made it appreciated. 
They knew the Winter's term would be short, and that 
much must be crowded into it. Sturdy in body and 
strong in will, they became heroic without knowing it. 

It need not seem strange to us that certain definite 
results flowed naturally from an education gotten thus 
in the old Red School House. One of them was 
tenacity of purpose. The Litchfield County man has 
been noted for holding on. Like "Bud JNIeans' " dog, 
"Heaven and yarth couldn't make him let go." He 
stuck to the rocky farm, and made it bud and blossom 
as the rose. He held steadily to the faith of his fathers, 
although the mystery was profound and the theology 
beyond his comprehension. He held to awakened ideals 
of education, although they could only be realized in 
his sons and daughters. The goal once fixed, he fast- 
ened his eyes upon it, and reached out toward it with 
all his might, though mountains of difficulties lay be- 
tween him and it. He was trained to this by the school 
and the farm, both of which taught him to endure hard- 
ship and laugh at obstacles. 

Another result was independence of character. The 
way of knowledge was no fixed path for every student 
to follow. He blazed his way, as did Horace Bushnell, 
a graduate of the old Red School House. It mattered 
not how the problem was solved, so long as it was solved. 
It mattered not how the preparation for college was 
gotten, so long as it was gotten. He came to think that 
it was better to make a way than to find one. Such 
training produced inventors, explorers, improvers on the 

91 



The Old Red School House 

past. This Yankee trait was fostered, if not born, in the 
district school. 

The heroic element has been spoken of, but should 
have more than a passing word. Our county has been 
the fruitful soil for the growth of heroic men and 
women. No distinction ought to be made, for although 
the women have not figured so much in the public eye 
they have no less possessed themselves of heroic souls. 
The mother of a hero must be a heroine. She must fire 
the soul of her son for great tasks worthily accomplished. 
Without the right influences of the school her work 
cannot be made perfect. Easy tasks easily accom- 
plished, ways made smooth for the feet of our sons and 
daughters, their wills weakened by frequent yielding to 
difficulties, do not nourish heroic, self-sacrificing souls. 

Farewell to the old Red School House! Its work is 
done. Here and there one decorates the countryside, 
but its walls no longer resound to the hum of a half 
hundred boys and girls. Its paths are grass-grown, its 
door is half off its hinges. The children of the district — 
if there are any — are carried in a wagon, hired by the 
school money, to the busy centre of industry and life. 
In the mean time the old Red School House dreams of 
bygone days. 



93 





Now you hear nothiiifi V.ut a choked, gurgling sound. 



LITCHFIELD COUNTY 
SKETCHES 



IX 

A Highwa}^ in Winter 

HAD you only seen it in the Summer time you 
could hardly believe it the same road. Winter 
changes roads just as it does brooks. Yonder 
trout stream wliich you followed last June is the same, 
and yet not the same. It was singing over the stones 
free and happy then, darting under the bridge and play- 
ing hide and seek through the alders. It served as a 
beautiful looking glass for all the fairies and the little 
girls who waded in it with their white bare feet. Now 
you hear nothing but a choked, gurgling sound, as the 
poor brook crawls along under the ice. The alders do 
not even hide it on this mid-Winter day, but are frosted 
over like the ghosts of their former selves. Down in 
the meadow where you took that half-pound trout out 
of the deep pool there is no stream to be seen, for the 
snow has drifted over it from bank to bank, the warmest 
kind of a blanket. The tliirsty cattle from a nearby 
barnyard are searching for water, which they can hear 
but cannot see. The boy decides to help them get to it, 
and, shovelling off the snow, cuts a hole through the ice, 

95 



A Highway in Winter 

until the cold water rises through the clefts made by 
his axe, and the grateful cows crowd around to get a 
drink. 

The highway in the Summer time was full of life and 
beauty. The trees that overhung it were the nesting 
places for birds, while the squirrels chased in and out of 
the stone wall and cracked nuts on the lower branches 
of the hickory tree all through the Fall. Happy chil- 
dren went singing on their way to school, stopping to 
make daisy chains or to play in the little rivulet at the 
foot of the hill. Lovers sauntered along, plucking the 
roadside flowers and forgetting the errands upon which 
they had been sent. The hedgerows on either side were 
bright with color, while grasshoj^pers, crickets and katy- 
dids filled the air with their strident music by night and 
by day. A wagon load of people going off for a day's 
outing stopped at the toj) of the hill to admire the wide- 
sweeping view. Everything tempted one to loiter and 
enjoy the restful sights and sounds. 

Now all is changed, and you are not just certain where 
the highway is. Looking across the landscape, you 
can just see what appears to be a fence of some kind 
on one side, but on the other side there is only the level 
expanse of snow. It has driven over the wall and filled 
the road to the depth of several feet. Here is a moun- 
tain chain stretching right across the road with over- 
hanging cliffs, which the boy, exploring these white 
mountains, cuts off with a stick and watches the ava- 
lanche as it tumbles down. The wind was busy all night, 
and moved the snow out of the meadow into the road. 

96 



A Highway in Winter 

The trees have become way-marks, and the farmer knows 
that the road is somewhere midway between them. Since 
the children must go to school a mile away, and the girls 
cannot wade through the snow, the road must be 
broken out. 

The strong, slow oxen are yoked up and hitched to 
the great wood sled, shovels are brought out and a start 
is made. For a time the patient animals plod through the 
snowdrifts, but after a bit they come to our mountain 
chain, which must be cut through. The snow here has 
sifted together hard, the particles packing closely to- 
gether, and it may be cut out in cubes like solid chunks 
of loaf sugar and thrown on either side of the path 
which is being made. Or the farmer thought it so much 
work that when he came to the next Alpine chain of 
drifts he concluded to go around. Out in the field the 
ground is nearly bare, for to help out the sleighing the 
snow has nearly all come into the highway. So he takes 
down the fence, or turns out through a bar-way, and 
goes through the meadow and then out into the pasture, 
and so back into tlie road once more. It is not the best 
of sleighing out there, for the runners hit against the 
stones and scrape over the bare ground. Passing by 
night over the path thus made, the sparks will fly from 
the steel shoes of the sleigh. 

There is one frequenter of the country in Winter who 
is independent of the highway, and that is the fox. He 
crosses and recrosses it, however, just for sociability. 
The boy often found his tracks, but only once did he 
see the fox himself. Then he looked at the lad in a sur- 

97 



A Highway in Winter 

prised sort of way, and wandered slowly along, saying 
to himself, "No gun." Foxes have a way of sticking to 
their own roads, for you cannot help but notice that 
they cross the highway in almost the same place day 
after day. The hunter takes advantage of this charac- 
teristic, and stations himself by the fox's road to shoot 
him as he goes by, fleeing from the dogs. 

How silent a highway is in Winter as compared with 
the Summer! The wind is blowing straight from the 
north, carrying stinging particles of snow with it, which 
cut the face and blind the eyes. The boys and girls on 
their way to and from school turn their backs to the wind, 
and thus walk backward until they get their breath. 
Passing through the grove down in the hollow, they 
think they hear a sound and stop to listen. In the hem- 
locks below the road they hear a soft, cheery call, and 
stop to watch a chickadee foraging for his supper. At 
another time they listen to the lonely, ghostlike rap, rap 
of the woodpecker, as he works for his AVinter's bread 
and butter. At night one hears the frost cracking the 
ice down in the gorge, and sometimes a sharp report 
made in the freezing snow by the side of the road. 

On moonlight nights the highway, where it drops 
down the steep hill, is the gathering place for all the 
boys and girls of the neighborhood. They come from 
the farm houses far and near to coast down the Long 
Hill, as it is called. John went over and asked Susan 
to go with him. The home-made sled, shod with steel 
and made to carry only two, glides down the steep snow- 
clad hillside, to the merry sounds of shouts and laugh- 

98 



A High^vay in Winter 

ter. They may chance to overturn occasionally into the 
soft snow by the side of the road, but that only calls 
forth louder shrieks and laughter. Exercise and ex- 
citement make them to forget the cold, and the Winter 
highway, that ordinarily has such a dull time, is most 
happy to give the lovers such pleasure. 

At another time, when the highway stretched away 
for miles over hills and through the valleys, with the 
snow packed solidly under foot, the sleighs with merry 
loads went creaking over it. The bells, large, jolly, 
whole-souled bells, made of genuine bell metal, jingled 
furiously, but could not drown the merriment of the 
young men and maidens going to singing school, where 
they are drilled by the old singing master who taught in 
all the neighborhood. 

On another afternoon the farmer and his wife pass 
quietly over the highway for a Winter's visit with some 
relatives in an adjoining neighborhood, staying to tea 
and driving home by the moonlight. This is about all 
the recreation they have, and it rests them and makes 
them feel young and sentimental again. 

The highway is never more beautiful in Winter than 
when there has been an ice storm. Then every tree 
is laden down with its icy fruit, and all the grass 
blades and weed stalks left over from last Autumn have 
grown to several times their natural size. The stones in 
the wall and the fence rails shine like glass, while dia- 
monds and brilliants sparkle everywhere. As the sun 
comes up the ice begins to fall upon the hard crust of 
the snow, making Nature's crystal bells to ring most 

99 
LOFC. 



A HighAvay in Winter 

sweetly. At such a time some of the trees, particularly 
the white birches, become very reverent, bowing clear 
to the ground beneath their heavy weight of ice. They 
seem to know that there are troubles that it is better to 
bow before than to stand up under and be broken by 
them. 

This much is true, that, though one may not enjoy the 
New England Winter, the Summer is more appre- 
ciated because of the sharp contrast. The child, they say, 
always loves the Winter time, and it is a mark of age 
to dread its coming and to wish to escape from its rigor. 
Cold and sno^v help in hardening the moral muscles, and 
they who are trained by Xorthern Winters are more 
ready to carry on a successful warfare against all other 
opposing forces. He who has plodded over a highway 
in Winter cheerfully and courageously will make more 
rapid progress on life's highway, which must ever have 
its Winter's days. 




101 



LITCHFIELD COUNTY 
SKETCHES 



X 

stone Walls and Shad Fences 

THE wire fence is that of the modern farmer, and 
is extravagant because he must go to town and 
buy it, and cruel if he uses, as he too often does, 
the barbed wire. One could stroll in the ante-belkmci 
days through the pastures and down by the brooksides 
umnolested and unafraid. The fences were either stone 
walls or rail affairs of various patterns. No signs, so 
common nowadays, stared one in the face, "Hunting and 
Fishing Forbidden Here." The farmer, if you met 
him, inquired after your catch of fish, and told you 
where there was a splendid hole, down under the roots 
of the old tree, or just below the mill dam. The farmer's 
dog wagged his tail, as much as to say, "Good luck to 
you, boy." Now all is different. You wade down a 
brook through tangled alders and wild grapevines, and 
come suddenly upon barbed wires stretched across it. 
You look up and see the almost universal sign, warning 
you that you are trespassing. Or, if the warning is not 
there, you are surprised by the farmer while lying flat 
upon your stomach trying to throw into a nearby pool. 

103 



stone Walls and Shad Fences 

He comes angrily upon you, his dog snarling before 
him, and begins to curse and to swear, or at least to call 
you more names than has any English lord. You sup- 
posed that the brook was free, did not know that the 
owner objected, and end by laying a piece of money in 
his hand, at which he is pacified, and goes back to put 
out more barbed wire fence and teach his dog to drive off 
all intruders. Some foreigners who have bought up the 
old farms are especially cantankerous about other peo- 
ple poaching on their preserves. They learned their 
lesson in the Old Country, where, I suppose, they un- 
derstood the gentle art of poaching. The grandfathers 
of other days would no more have taken money for the 
fishing privilege of their brooks than they would have 
broken the Ten Commandments. A few of their sons 
are still living, and make the life of the trout fisherman 
endurable. Such farmers welcome you to their brooks 
and their homes, put your horse in the stable, invite you 
to have a "bite" with them, ask for the news of the town, 
and act like social human beings, citizens of a free coun- 
try, where all are brothers. 

There is nothing poetical in the wire fence; it is pro- 
saic and commonplace to a degree. Neither is there 
anything substantial about it. It is here this year, moved 
the next, and lying on the ground because of a rotten 
post the year after. It is inartistic, since you cannot 
have any color scheme connected with it, and no hedge- 
row grows naturally near it. 

There was a fence which one might often see in our 
county in the old days, but whether used now I do not 

104 



stone Walls and Shad Fences 

know. The boy was set to build one about a turnip 
patch on an August day. His father, having an errand 
in town, gave him as his stint (we used to call it "stent") 
the building of the fence, telling him that when the 
work was done he could go a-fishing. The turnip patch 
was in the angle of the field, and the new fence was the 
base of the triangle. There was to be about a dozen 
rods of this fence, and the material was all on the 
ground. The boy accepted the challenge, looked at the 
job and fell to work, as was his wont, with all his might. 
The fence was to be that of the shiftless man, called 
"shad." Why, the boy did not know then, and does not 
until this day. Possibly it was because the rails when 
set in place resembled the bones in the dorsal fin of a 
shad. A beginning was made by piling up two or three 
stones, as large as the builder could well handle. Then, 
a rail having been laid in place, one end on the stones 
and the other on the ground, two stakes were driven 
in place and the next rail laid, one end on the ground and 
the other in the stake, and so on until the job was fin- 
ished. It meandered across the field at the will of the 
builder, and when done was pretty sure to arrest the at- 
tention of the passer by and the progress of sheep and 
cattle. 

Such a fence was not as picturesque as the "Virginia 
rail," a most common fence in the days when timber 
was cheap and plenty. This is still to be seen, but 
for the most part the rails are covered with lichens and 
bear other marks of age. It zig-zagged across the 

105 



stone Walls and Shad Fences 

field, the corners of the rails being crossed, and when 
well built those same corners were fortified with stakes 
and caps. The boy with the big auger helped to make 
those same caps on a rainy day, along with some bar- 
posts. This kind of fence fairly made a bid for berry- 
bushes and golden rod to hide in its friendly corners, out 
of the way of the plough and the mowing machine, and 
the bitter-sweet and Jacob's ladder to climb its rail ends 
and stakes. What a place for meditation and whittling 
the top rail was for the boy, while the cows wandered 
along leisurely toward the let-down pasture bars near- 
by! The co^vs had time enough, and so did the boy. 
Very likely a woodchuck has burrowed in a nearby 
corner of the fence, taking advantage of the security 
offered by the friendly hedgerow. Not seeing the boy, 
who for the time being has stopped his whistle, he pokes 
his wise nose out of the hole, comes out and sits down 
upon the observation mound at its mouth, and with his 
two front feet hanging by his side stands for a moment 
at attention. Not discovering the enemy near, he con- 
cludes it is safe to accept the invitation of a nearby 
clover field to come to supper. The boy came upon him 
once unawares, and he had to hide in an old stone wall, 
where he in turn whistled angrily at the boy, who wor- 
ried him with a long stick. Old stone walls are strong 
fortresses for the woodchucks when they are disturbed 
by humans. But that fortress was not always impreg- 
nable when attacked by a shrewd man and a wise old 
dog. The farmer removed a few stones, and Rover did 
the rest. 

107 



stone Walls and Shad Fences 

Stone walls are the fences of the industrious, enter- 
prising farmer. His material is all furnished by Nature 
on the ground, and has the immense advantage of being 
indestructible. More than that, it is material which was 
in the way of the scythe and the plough, and later of the 
mowing machine. To remove the stones from the field 
and build them into a strong, durable and artistic stone 
wall, "Hie labor, hoc opus est." 

This farmer, however, loves to work, and is never 
happier than when he has some stony field to clear and 
fence. The enemy is worthy of his courage and muscle. 
He is a pioneer clearing the soil, a benefactor of the 
world making another acre or two of arable land, a 
creator both of a new field and a new fence. A genera- 
tion ago stone walls were fashionable. It was worth 
going through the county just to see their long straight 
fines stretching across the fields. It is to be noted that 
a coUege professor from New York City is again in- 
troducing this well-nigh lost art into the State and 
county. These walls of the old daj^^s were sometimes 
made of very large stones piled up one on another, a 
single thickness of them, tapering off at the top with 
smaller stones. Of such a fence the farmer was wont 
to say somewhat sneeringly, "You could throw a cat 
through it." Other walls were built wide enough to 
drive cart and oxen on the top of them, and would make 
a good fortification for another Gettysburg. When 
the mowing machines came in they were a wonderful 
incentive to wall building. One improvement forces 
another, as the bicycles and automobiles testify with re- 

108 



stone Walls and Shad Fences 

gard to public highways. It was at first thought that 
mowing machines could not be used in stony fields. That 
fallacy has been pretty well exploded, for they are using 
them now in any field where you can drive a cart. 

Stone walls and fences have to do with character. 
Suppose the boy had never built any other kind of 




" stone walls and fences have to do with character." 

fence but the shad variety of other days, which, by the 
way, was finished by two o'clock and followed by a 
fishing excursion. It was easily built and easily de- 
stroyed, and the builder need not be a skilled workman. 
There were no special obstacles to be overcome and 
no great difficulties to be encountered. It need not 
be built with plumb line and sighting stakes. Any- 

109 



stone Walls and Shad Fences 

body could build a shad feuce at any time. Not so 
the stone wall, for difficulties lay in the making from 
first to last. The stones, set firmly in the soil, were hard 
to lift and harder to break. They had a way of smash- 
ing one's fingers. The boy disliked them because they 
were always getting in the way of his big toes. He 
thought they grew on the meadows, so often was he set 
to pick them up. Then there must be preparation made 
for the good stone wall by digging to below the frost 
line and laying the large footing stones in place. All 
the stones, little and big, must be laid true to the line 
and on a secure bed. One rod a day was a good stint 
for two men and a boy, with the help of a strong yoke 
of oxen. Such work develops hardihood, accuracy, 
moral muscle. He who has built stone wall is quite 
ready to undertake any of the great tasks of life. In 
New Preston, Horace Bushnell built stone wall on a 
college vacation to forget the toothache. It was Horace 
Greeley, was it not, who said the stones of New Eng- 
land had been the potent cause of the character of its 
men? These men, like Horace Bushnell, became pioneers 
in the great West, or, as he did, pioneers in the world's 
thought land, blazing a way for others to follow. Noth- 
ing can daunt such men, for they have built stone wall. 




110 



LITCHFIELD COUNTY 
SKETCHES 



XI 

Trout Brooks 

SHOLTLD you ask some of the sons of Litchfield 
County concerning the most fascinating bits of 
scenery within her borders, they would be sure 
to tell you that these were to be found along her many 
trout streams running among the hills. These will give 
you, it is true, only what we have called bits of scenery, 
but they are like those bits of Venetian tear vases from 
the old Roman tombs, valued not for their size but for 
their marvellous beauty. It is doubtful whether any one 
can enjoy these leaping, rushing, gurgling, laughing 
streams quite as much as he who goes a-fishing. 

Everybody knows that there is fishing and fishing. 
That is not the best in which you catch fish simply. You 
can get all the glory of the mountain and the morning, 
tingling nerves and warm, rich blood, even though your 
creel may be empty. The recreation of fishing is quite 
independent of the fish. The ideal fisherman fishes not 
to fill his basket, but for appetite and health, for com- 
munion with Nature and with himself, for life's best 
wine drunk in with the pure air, for the sunshine and 
the bird notes. These he may always "catch." The 

111 



Trout Brooks 

pursuit of the fish or the game just gives zest to the 
trip, and furnishes a good excuse for his being out of 
doors in the Springtime. To know the beauties of our 
mountain county you must follow the trout brooks 
through woods and meadows until they lose themselves 
in the rivers. You certainly will not know the charm 
of these hills to the full until you do. 

You are going a-fishing for trout, then, and will take 
a friend along with you. It is a proof of friendship that 
you should ask him to go, for at such times men get 
close together, and tell each other their hopes and fears, 
their plans and purposes. The morning dawns bright 
and clear, for you have watched for the warm morning 
after the Spring rain. The phoebe bird salutes you 
from the ridge of the old barn as you pass out into the 
presence of the new day. The robin chorus was fin- 
ished while you were dressing and taking your hasty 
breakfast. By the way, what a fine chorus it is, with 
the catbird for a soloist! The leader evidently spends 
his nights in a treetop, on some rise of ground, where 
he gets the first peep of day in his eyes. Immediately 
he sounds his waking call, and straightway is answered 
by one here and another there, until the trees of the wood 
and the orchard seem full of the members of this Litch- 
field County choral union. The air fairly vibrates with 
their songs. They sing before breakfast, and the sun 
is no sooner up than their music dies away, and they all 
go a-fishing for worms on the lawn and in the meadow, 
and after that turn their attention to prospecting for 
nests and following architectural pursuits for their 

113 



X- 

X- 
X. 
JQ. 

r 






vdiitt ^LiUM; T?ee^. tx^ i^::* ian 




LttgitHr ^tHc. vurhitg r: ii*e 






■»»tf^ l*ai.- 



TliH- 



> «rt 



Tr^mt Brooke 

i^sat hdkMe up fmai fsmmv- ^mssks, A» we ^jjisM mss- 

Msmg tadde — wbs^ osesfcaiiieBsitt t&ieine ! 
readi" t© jisii! — we heair tijie esqmsilk: uaaasic . . :...; 
itsrmh^ as it emsses up fimm. tibe dleptibs ®f tiine- f 'or^«t 

of n^sterkKis nado^ Ms> iils ^isipBii^r ir.. .' y^^ tvL. 
dreani ©f all sweet seoiB^*. ^'^^ '--■--- - ^ e^er 

beazd. Xew yeo feear tine ^ , , , jt' the 

tMWJi^ as it wnads iim sssd (Owt (owrer fcr sfeMDess. car iifcs S0?£lt 
plasiiiiig' as it falls &reF sonBe imKJiSiheo^eiFed s«})^ Tlie 
jellow e«9wdips aire SedkisB^ ifis l)»iiiksy Mke g^i 
ncKKodar snDL T^cfim eonsep eaiitHMs^ iip tg^waM t^ .-.^.s. 
oi tine stream^ and let jowc h^^ ^exst wiiin itSse cemremi: 
as it swills moder an greghairagiireg IsaiB^ wiseire t&e- l)ic]2^fi6s 
are pi©r«^aiJigljr in yowar way, QmeSp twnee it f IsdDfows 
dfiwn wiSli the sbreana wifiiMWit atftiadiBng' amy attte~/" "~ 
Lifitle jaa kncsw wlsat sifiarp eyes ame watdJnimig .::. : j 
Hue tisird time ^beie is a Iseak in ^be pool^ a dadbi dswn 
flse stiream^ a qoick paQ cm tloe line^ a ^mM. ixp ^se inod 
and tlnmoo^ yefor aim. as ysDn fed tlsat tSse :@sbi is Inos&ed. 
These In'^idk: tiroinit cm the smaUo' stireaimBS do mot CHrdi- 
naiily hare to be p^layed Icmgf^ as thor aaze is not gpreaiL 
Socm ycm hare hinfi in yoor ha^tet^ along: wiHh sosne fiie^ 
f emSr and hare an oppovtonifiy off seeing ^he nsost heam- 
f -^ '' :.t ever swana in 



spedkled hean^.'^ Sdic^ him now as he Mes tSu^ie 
fire^ily takoi fwrnsk the eoM wator; how perfeet his ^st- 
pexing^ foim, built for speed like ^be lacdboBser eofloared 
to soit the hglit cir dask wator 

115 



Trout Brooks 

working hours. You see that a pair of these musicians, 
having agreed to Hve together "until death do us part," 
have very nearh' finished a nest in the cherry tree, which 
has decked itself in milk-white blossoms for the bridal 
and the homecoming. Passing down through the rows 
of pink and ^^•hite apple trees, we hear the woodpecker 




" Now you hear the gurgling and purling of the brook." 

calling his mate from the dead limb of a tree, using 
it for a drum. White mist, like a soft bridal veil, 
hangs over the lower reaches of the brook which we 
purpose following. I^ike good fishermen, we choose to 
fish down the stream, and so follow a wood road far 
up the valley until we come to the upper reaches of the 
brook, where its cool waters are gathered from springs 

114 



Trout Brooks 

that bubble up from mossy banks. As we adjust our 
fishing tackle — what excitement there is in getting 
ready to fish! — v>e hear the exquisite music of the wood 
thrush, as it comes up from the depths of the forest 
below. There is hardly any other bird which puts so much 
of mysterious melody into its singing, making you to 
dream of all sweet sounds and voices you have ever 
heard. Now you hear the gurgling and purling of the 
brook, as it winds in and out over the stones, or its soft 
plashing as it falls over some moss-covered rock. The 
yellow cowslips are flecking its banks, like glints of 
noonday sun. You creep cautiously up toward the bank 
of the stream, and let your hook float with the current 
as it swirls imder an overhanging bank, ^^■here the bushes 
are provokingly in j^our way. Once, twice it follows 
down with the stream without attracting any attention. 
Little you kno^v what sharp eyes are watching it, for 
the third time there is a break in the pool, a dash down 
the stream, a quick pull on the line, a thrill up the rod 
and through your arm, as j^ou feel that the fish is hooked. 
These brook trout on the smaller streams do not ordi- 
narily have to be played long, as their size is not great. 
Soon you have him in your basket, along with some fresh 
ferns, and have an opportunity of seeing the most beau- 
tiful fish that ever swam in water, the true Salvelinus 
fontinalis. The brook trout has well been called "the 
speckled beauty." Behold him now as he lies there 
freshly taken from the cold water; how perfect his ta- 
pering form, built for speed like the racehorse, colored 
to suit the light or dark water in which he lives, and 

115 








K.««^Mlt» 











With the old mill in ruins. 



Trout Brooks 

ground, and in the mean time fishing off these same 
rocks, until the miller warned him that the millstone 
had done its ^vork for him. The boy has grown to man- 
hood now, and is a busy doctor in a far-away city. I 
wonder whether his heart does not long for the old days 
when he used to go a-fishing. 




119 



LITCHFIELD COUNTY 
SKETCHES 



XII 

The Country Doctor 

IT would be an open question as to which occupied 
the first place in the affections of the people of a 
country town, the minister or the doctor. The 
lawyer would not have to be considered, for few of the 
smaller towns had one, and for the most part had little 
use for one. The doctor, however, was indispensable. 
Sooner or later he found his way into almost every 
home. This particular doctor belonged to the whole 
southern tier of towns in our county. He rode a circuit 
of twenty miles or more. If you wanted him you would 
first go to his house, and then if he was not at home, as 
was usually the case, and the call was an urgent one, 
you would find where he was going, how long he had 
been away, and start out to run him down. He was 
often gone a day and a night, and sometimes two 
whole days, from home. On such long trips he used to 
put up where night overtook him, unless there were 
pressing calls farther on. He often spent the night at 
my father's house. I can see him now, rotund and jolly, 
his rudd}^ weather-beaten face wreathed with smiles, 
with a kind word on his lips for all, especially the chil- 

121 



The Country Doctor 

dren. Often as he met us returning from school he 
would stop and greet us with the cheery "Hello, hub!" 
"Hello, sis!" At such times he used to ask us to gather 
for him some of the different kinds of medicinal 
herbs which he used in his practice, rewarding us with 
pennies, greatly prized by our childish souls. His horse 
always had a weary look, and the carriage was bespat- 
tered with mud. He was accustomed to take out from 
under the seat a large medicine chest, to pat the chil- 
dren on the head, and follow them unannounced into the 
farm house kitchen. The mother was ordinarily the 
sick one, and he would enter the bedroom, sit down by 
the bed, look at the tongue, feel of the pulse, and tell a 
story. The story was as necessary a part of his medical 
practice as anytliing else. One of his patients said to 
him once, "Oh, doctor, I believe j^ou would tell a story 
if I were dying." The reply was, "]My dear madam, 
you are not dying," and then he would laugh and tell 
another story. "I was sent for," he said, "the other 
night to go in great haste to see a man who, his friends 
said, was very sick. I went, and found that he had been 
overeating, and told him that the best medicine for him 
was fasting and prayer. Then he would double up 
with laughter. He was a man withal of tender sym- 
pathies, eager to help his patients, but knowing all the 
time that their minds needed to be turned away from 
themselves. The story was not told for the sake of tell- 
ing it so much as for the sake of the remedial effect 
which he had observed from that special kind of medi- 
cation. He appreciated, too, the fact that "a merry 

122 



The Country Doctor 

heart doeth good hke a medicine," and so tried to hght 
up the faces of those who watched beside the sick. Our 
country doctor was the foe of gloom and pessimism, 
and his coming into the sickroom was hke the turning 
of the ocean's tide, and the bringing with its turning a 
strong salt breeze, full of the ozone of the wind-swept 
and water-kissed waves. He knew that medicines 
needed cooperating influences, and just so far as he 
could he set all these in motion by his presence and his 
words of hope and cheer. 

This doctor was, of course, his own apothecary and 
carried his drug store with him. Coming from the sick- 
room, he would open that wonderful medicine chest, joke 
with the children who crowded around, and begin the 
task of picking out the remedies which were wanted. As 
memory recalls, few of the bottles were labelled, or the 
packages containing herbs or drugs. He would take 
out the cork, tip the bottle to his tongue, taste, shake 
his head and try again. Of the powders he would make 
trial in the same way until he found one which pleased 
him. Then he would mix up his doses, bitter concoc- 
tions oftentimes, every dose of which made one desire 
to get well as soon as possible; large, generous pills, 
which would go down only after several brave attempts, 
all mixed and made right before your eyes. These 
powders, pills and potions sofnehow were efficacious, al- 
though so disagreeable. I have always thought that the 
doctor's presence, his jolly good cheer, his hearty assur- 
ance, ''Oh, I will fix you up something that will do you 
good!" did more than the medicines themselves. Here 

123 




" He was the ideal Good Samaritan." 



The Country Doctor 

again it was "the man behind the gun" that was the need- 
ful thing. People had wonderful confidence in him, be- 
lieved in him implicitly, took his medicines faithfully, 
and usually did get better. 

Our doctor did not always practise what he preached, 
for he was accustomed to inveigh against green tea and 
warn his patients not to drink it. It was bad, he told 
them, for the stomach, for the nerves and for the liver. 
At a neighbor's he was asked if he would have some 
dandelion coffee, which he was always prescribing for 
other people, but he declined in favor of the green tea, 
which she had in the steaming teapot by her side. You 
could not expect, however, that doctors would take all 
of the medicine which they prescribed for other people! 

This country doctor made no distinction between the 
rich and the poor, those who would pay him and those 
who would not. He visited all alike, and in all prob- 
ability never collected half the bills due him. He took 
what came to him in money or in produce — wood, hay 
or oats — and went his way. He died not so very long 
ago, mourned by all the countryside. They had lost 
not only their beloved family doctor, but a friend as 
well. He was the ideal Good Samaritan. He never 
passed by on the other side. His own ease, convenience 
or pleasure did not enter into the question, and it is 
doubtful whether he ever consulted them. The man 
who needed him was the one whom he w^ished to see. He 
went to him cheerfully, and poured into his wounds the 
oil and the wine which represented the best he had to 
give. He bore him on heart and mind back into the 

125 



The Country Doctor 

land of health. If need be, he spent his own money 
in caring for him. Winter's snows, Spring mud and 
freshets, Summer heat, were all the same to him. Out 
of his warm bed in the dead of Winter he would get 
and travel across country through unbroken snowdrifts, 
to quiet some sick child or minister to the poor mother, 
and do it uncomplainingly — yea, cheerfully. 

It was a hard life, harder than that of most men, not 
to say doctors. But there must have been much satis- 
faction in it. To be the instrument of relieving suffer- 
ing men and women of pain, to see them creeping slowly 
back to the land of health again, to make a hearty, strong 
child out of a sickly baby — these were the things that 
were Avorth while. Our country doctor had his reward 
in more ways than one. He was an instrmiient in the 
hands of the Heavenly Father as much as was the min- 
ister who looked after the souls of the people. All his 
practice was the cooperation with those vital forces back 
of which was the Lord of life and of infinite love. 
Prayer had its place, and one country doctor bore wit- 
ness that he never gave medicine without a prayer for 
guidance, and that it might be efficacious. INIedicines, 
these good old family physicians believed, had their place 
in the Divine economy with food and drink and air, 
God having made them all to be used for the physical 
wellbeing of mankind. Hence the doctor had a right 
to think of himself as one of the Lord's servants. 

Then, too, he had his reward in the out of doors life 
which he lived. The sunrises and sunsets were his; his 
the moonlit nights and the stormy, dark ones. His the 

126 



The Country Doctor 

thunderstorms by which he was often overtaken along 
lonely roads. At such times he had those marvellous 
flashlight pictures such as the lightning alone can give, 
in which mountain, lake and stream were for a moment 
seen in all their beauty, to be followed in a heartbeat by 
black darkness. All the changes of the seasons, the 
melting of the Winter's snow and the coming of the 
first Spring flowers and song birds had been welcomed 
by him. The flaming hillsides, the golden tints of Au- 
tmnn, the mellow days of Indian Summer had all 
passed before his eyes year by year as he went on his 
long drives to the bedside of the sick. The feathered 
folk along the highways, the squirrels following the 
rail fences, the little children whom he came to know 
so well, were all his friends, and he loved them all. The 
business man, methodical to a moment in his going and 
coming from store or factory, sees very little of the day 
as a whole, or the year as a whole. He is safely housed 
from storms, and rarely sees the sun rise on a Summer 
morning. Nature does not give to him her heart as she 
does to the man who is familiar with all her changing 
moods and seasons. The country doctor becomes ac- 
quainted with her through the days and the nights spent 
in her open courts, and she tells him all her secrets. 

The history of one life is the history of many in our 
county. These unselfish, heroic men who went about 
doing good deserve to be remembered. And they are 
appreciated when they are gone, and kindly words are 
spoken concerning them. Would it not be well to re- 
member them with words of appreciation and thankful- 

127 



The Country Doctor 

ness while they are yet among the hving whom they 
have helped? The \^'ords of Jamie Soutar, in "A Doctor 
of the Old School/' by Ian INIaclaren, come back to us 
forcefully: " 'But wae's me' — and Jamie broke down 
utterly behind a fir tree, so tender a thing is a cynic's 
heart — 'that fouk 'ill tak a man's best wark a' his days 
M ithoot a word an' no do him honour till he dees. Oh, 
if they bed only githered like this juist aince when he 
was livin', an' lat him see he hedna laboured in vain! 
His reward hes come ower late, ower late.' " 

These unselfish physicians who remain among us, who 
ride over these hills and up and down these valleys in all 
sorts of weather on their errands of mercy, are worthy 
of our loving praise, for they exemplify that ideal set 
forth so beautifully by the Great Physician when He 
said that He came not to be ministered unto but to 
minister. 

"Greater love hatli no man than this, that a man lay 
down his life for his friends." 



129 



LITCHFIELD COUNTY 
SKETCHES 



XIII 

A Hill -town Meeting House 

OUR county has many meeting houses which have 
been fountains of Hfe for the larger towns and 
cities. These hill-town churches have furnished 
able men and women for the city churches, making pos- 
sible the great things wrought by them. The country 
towns have given to the colleges some of their best stu- 
dents, as well as their famous athletes ; to the learned pro- 
fessions their most distinguished men, and to the business 
world its most successful financiers. At the same time the 
West has been seeded by the best products of the hill 
towns — their young men and women. It is impossible to 
conceive how the great jNIiddle West, and the real West, 
could have been saved for God and for country without 
the rich fruitage of the New England meeting house. 
These hill-town churches need to be looked after care- 
fully by the sons and daughters who had their birth and 
nurture in them. Their foundations should be kept in 
repair, the paint often freshened, the old bell kept ring- 
ing on the Sabbath, and the Gospel ministry sustained. 

131 



A Hill -town Meeting House 

This is one of the things that are worth while. No love 
for foreign missions, no pathetic appeals for Western 
frontier work, should lead to the neglect of this. Both 
home and foreign work can now be done in the hill 
towns, to which liberty-loving foreigners are coming 
from the ends of the earth. 




It was white, within and without, and stood on a 
hill like Jerusalem of old." 



Behold, then, a picture of a hill-town church, not ex- 
actly as it is, although it has not so greatly changed as 
some, but as it was within the memory of the writer. 

It was white, within and without, and stood on a hill 
like Jerusalem of old. Thither the tribes went up much 
oftener than the ancient Jews to their hill temple. This 

132 



A Hill -town Meeting House 

hill town is eight miles due south from Litchfield, and 
for more than one hundred years was known as Litch- 
field South Farms, being an integral part of that splen- 
did town. It is hardly fifty years since it became a 
separate town by the name of JNIorris, one of its honored 
family names. In the sixties there was still an acad- 
emy there, a long, low, rambling building, a sort of 
"annex" to the house in which Mr. Samuel Ensign, the 
schoolmaster, lived. INIr. Ensign was the son-in-law of 
INIr. ]\Iorris, the founder of the school, one of the first 
academies in the county. Not many boys attended the 
school, and those were for the most part from outside 
the town, and boarded in ^Ir. Ensign's family. This 
schoolmaster loved a good horse, and drove one which 
was the admiration of the small boys. In snowy weather 
he was wont to drive his wife to church, and we watched 
for the beautiful white horse as we did for the min- 
ister. INIr. Ensign, unlike the schoolmaster who pre- 
sided over "The Gunnery" in Washington, did not care 
for games and sports, but was dignified and severe in 
his appearance, artistic in his tastes, and cultivated in 
his manners. The home atmosphere for the boys must 
have been delightful, for JNIrs. Ensign was a charming 
woman, refined and educated. 

The church itself, in the old days, had w^ood stoves on 
either side of the entrances, with long pipes running the 
length of the building, sometimes smoking, and always 
having a sooty appearance. Around these stoves men, 
women and children gathered during the intermission 
between services on Winter Sundaj^s. Foot stoves were 

133 



A Hill -town Meeting House 

still in use by the older ladies, these being filled with 
the live coals from the church stoves. In the Summer 
the men visited under the horse sheds in the rear of the 
church, and ate their seed cookies or gingerbread and 
discussed the crops, while the women and children went 
to the old Smedley house kitchen, where there was a 
well with an oaken bucket, which, as it went down, 
wound up a rope with a heavy stone attached, by means 
of a large wooden drum. The children drank from tlie 
big dipper and gazed with awe down into the dark well. 
In this room there were milk pails and pans and a cheese 
press. Outside the door were a bed of fennel — meeting 
seed — and some rose bushes. Close by was the coun- 
try store and postofRce. The farmers who were not 
too severe went quietly and got their week's mail, se- 
creting it in their pockets. The county paper — the 
old Litchfield Enquirer — was usually gotten at this time. 
Many, however, felt that the mail should not be taken 
from the office on Sundays, but that it should be kept 
closed. The war changed this somewhat, for news from 
the front was looked for, a letter from George or John, 
telling about the battle of Antietam, or the Wilderness, 
or Cold Harbor. News items were exchanged and 
family matters talked over, for this was very likely the 
only social occasion during a month or months. The 
morning sermon was discussed at the noon hour, di- 
gested, so to speak, in preparation for the second one, 
which was sure to come in the afternoon. My father's 
family stayed all day, unless it took all the morning to 
break out the roads, as it sometimes did in hard Winters. 

134 



A Hill -town Meeting House 

We left home about half -past nine for the four miles' 
drive or walk, and usually did not reach home until half - 
past four or thereabouts. After that we had our sec- 
ond meal, and what so appetizing as an eight miles' 
journey to church, two sermons and Sunday School? 
During the Winter the Sunday School was suspended, 
and in place of it there was a prayer meeting, led by one 
of the deacons. This was held in the meeting house, for 
the conference room, as it was called, had not then been 
built. The boy remembers one such prayer meeting, 
led by a deacon whose only gift was a religious voice. 
The Scripture was Romans, the twelfth chapter, but 
those exhortations of the great apostle were so graven 
on the mind that they have stayed there ever since, al- 
though much has been lost. This hill-town church had 
in those days for its minister the Rev. David Parmele. 
He was ministerial in dress, in voice and in manners. 
Everything about him proclaimed "I am a minister of 
the everlasting Gospel." The black clothes, the high 
collar, the silk stock, the gold-bowed spectacles and the 
a^\'ful voice all told the same story. Mr. Parmele when 
he appeared in public invariably wore a silk hat, a bet- 
ter one on Sundays, and a second best on week days. 
He even wore a silk hat when he took care of his horse, 
presumably because he had no other. How do we know 
this? Because there came a day when, as usual, he 
walked sedately up the aisle of the meeting house and 
deposited his silk hat on the communion table, went into 
the pulpit and preached a solemn sermon, came down 
after the service and took up his hat to walk out. Of 

135 




i 



A Hill-town Meeting House 

a sudden something seemed to strike him, for, leaving 
his wife at the church door, he started with rapid gait 
toward the parsonage. Thus, by his very strange ac- 
tions, attention was called to him and his barn hat, cov- 
ered with cobwebs and hay seed. He had fed his horse 
at noon, and had gone to church forgetting to change 
his hat. 

Parson Parmele, as the ungodly called him, was a 
good man, and served his generation well. The chil- 
dren, however, hid when thej^ saw his horse and carriage 
coming over the hill. Although there were many boys 
and girls in the family, they seldom came forth until he 
had disappeared beyond the turn in the road. We 
welcomed the family doctor because of his kindly words 
and jolly, sympathetic face, but the minister — our min- 
ister he ought to have been — seemed to us to belong 
to quite another world. He reminded us of sickbeds, 
funerals and heaven. Ah, well! ministerial dignity be- 
came the men who preached the theology of John 
Calvin. 

This hill-town church in Litchfield South Farms nurt- 
ured a fine set of young men and women, in spite of 
their being afraid of the minister. Some of the boys 
went to college and into the ministry, and most of those 
trained in the old church have brought honor to their 
native place. The fathers and mothers were dignified, 
intellectual, shrewd men and women of the old New 
England stock. Few, very few, foreigners, perhaps 
not more than a half dozen families, lived within the 
borders of the society. The tide of emigration West 

137 



A Hill-town Meeting Hoose 

had not yet depopulated tbe luDs and TaDeys, and immi- 
ga&m fnmtk all lands had not vet set back into the 
fXHintzT towns. 

The meetiiig house was well fiHed cm Sundays at both 
servioes, the aider boys sitting in the gaUexy oq the one 
ade and the gids on the other. It was omsidaed an 
honor to gradnate tram, the f amDy pew to the galkiy. 
for it maiked a stage of dendopnoent from being under 
aulhonly immediate, to being trusted. If tibat tmst 
was Tioiated, the offender was brought Inck again and 
seated in the pew with the smaDer children. The sing- 
ers sat in the rear gaDexy, and were led by the meiodeoQ 
when there was anrr coe to ^ay it. cm- by tfie sioging 
master with bis toning f <wk. As I remember it. the 
smging was all done by tiie chnr, there being no sodi 
thin^ as eongregatianal singing. Indeed, as a boy. the 
idea nero- oocorred to me that the otMigregatian had 
amythn^ to do with that part of the serrice. Most 
people stood, it is tme, and fallowed the hymn with 
a book that had no music wntten in it. with oocasicHial 
g^bmoes at tiie choir, and in mam' instances they tamed 
ahont with great deiiberatioa and faced the choir, the 
better to see and hear iL 

The best thing that can be said of these hill-towD 
il mii l if js m our coonty is that they are character boQd- 
ers. They hare done for the soak of men what tiie 
schools have done for their minds. M<»ral integrity, 
parity, strength of will, hardness of moral fibre, all 
hare been the resalt of jost this kind of Congregational 
cfaoreh fife, where those cons iiUili ng the cfaaicfa and 



A Hill -town Meeting House 

congregation have managed its affairs and been lield 
responsible for its failures. The Congregational liill- 
town churches have been the fruitful mothers of men. 
Out of them have gone Beecher. Fiimey and Bushnell. 
Senator Piatt, of Comiecticut. General John Sedfrwick 
and a host of others, who have upheld the honor and 
made famous the towns and State that gave them birth. 
The greatest honor that can come to any town is to 
say of it. at the mention of some name that has become 
famous, '"This man was born there." Jolm Pierpont. 
scholar, la^^ye^, poet, priest and warrior, was bom not 
very far from this South Farms meeting house, in 1785. 
He was graduated from Yale College in 1804. a class- 
mate of John C. Callioun. Yale conferred on him the 
honorary- degree of :Master of Arts in 1821. and Har- 
vard the same degree in the following year. He was 
the grandfather of J. Pierpont Morgan, the eminent 
financier. In 1840 he issued his book of poems en- 
titled '"Wares of a Yerse-^Tight Made to Order." 
Previous to this he had pubhshed his ''Airs of Pales- 
tine." In 1861. at the age of seventy-six. Mr. Pierpont 
became an army chaplain, serving for one year. From 
1862 to 1864 he held a clerkship at Washington, and 
rendered his department of government valuable ser- 
vice in the compilation of statistics. ^Miatever was liis 
work, he magnified it and honored the position. He 
was a fine product of the hill town and its meeting house. 
Sturdy, brainy, conscientious, patriotic, with a frame of 
iron and a \v\l\ to match, he did his part of the world's 
work, and did it well. Along ^vith these quahties were 

139 




JOHN PIEKPONT 
Scholar, lawyer, poet, priest and warrior. 



A Hill -town Meeting House 

those more tender and gentle, with that lofty imagina- 
tion and pure ideahsm which made him a poet. This is 
witnessed by many of his poems, manifestly by that one 
entitled "Hymn of the Last Supper": 

"The winds are hushed, the peaceful moon 
Looks down on Zion's hill; 
The city sleeps, 'tis night's cahn noon. 
And all the streets are still." 

The Rev. John Pierpont, of Litchfield South Farms, 
bore witness by his noble life and manifold activities to 
the Pilgrim spirit set forth in his poem, published in 
1824, entitled "The Pilgrim Fathers": 

"The Pilgrim spirit has not fled: 

It walks in noon's broad light. 
And it watches the bed of the glorious dead, 

With the holy stars of night. 
It watches the bed of the brave who have bled, 

And shall guard this icebound shore, 
Till the waves of the bay, where the Mayflower lay. 

Shall foam and freeze no more." 



141 



LITCHFIELD COUNTY 
SKETCHES 



XIV 

The Delectable Mountains 

IT must always remain true that he who cHmbs to 
the mountain tops sees new beauties in earth and 
sky. Like jNIoses of old from the top of Pisgah's 
Mount, he will behold the promised land lying below 
him in all its far-stretching beauty. Thus we get a 
little farther away from the earth and a little nearer to 
heaven. Sea and sky, lakes and rivers are transfigured 
before him who with laborious steps has climbed the 
Delectable Mountains. Far above the din and strife of 
men, we are given holy vision of the new heavens and 
new earth, in which righteousness is finally to dwell. 
Movmtain peaks are loved by prophets, poets and seers. 
We shall go mountain climbing, then, without leaving 
our own county. Perchance we may find as much quiet 
beauty as we have found in foreign lands, and at less 
expense. 

We will begin at the southern end, where the eleva- 
tions, though less, have a restful charm and beauty all 
their own. Lover's Leap, on the Housatonic below 
New INIilford, opens up before one the quiet stretches 

143 



The Delectable Mountains 

of this largest of rivers within our borders. It resem- 
bles more a lake widening out from the dark gorge 
through which it forced its way in the glacial age. 
Wooded Goodyear Island lies in the foreground, while 
the river is lost among the hills of the south, over which 
the Autumn mists are hanging. The approach from the 



€ ^ 




" The river is lost among the hills." 



bluff has been so gradual that you do not imagine what 
you are coming to until, parting the bushes, it flashes 
out before you. That lovesick Indian maiden whose 
name and story are associated with the place ought to 
have been so enamored with the scenery as to have for- 
gotten her dusky lover, who without doubt was un- 

144 



The Delectable Mountains 

worthy of such suicidal devotion. The saner thing 
would have been to have spent a pleasant afternoon 
here by herself, and at evening time gone back to her 
father's wigwam, and, as a chief's daughter, fastened her 
affections upon another suitor, and very likely a more 
worthy one. One characteristic of love is, however, that 
it does not always do the sane thing. 

Across the river, and farther up the valley, is Candle- 
wood ^Mountain, probably so named because of the pine 
knots which it used to produce. From its summit you 
shall see the Housatonic, flowing down through fruitful 
intervales, with the fair village of New jVIilford on its 
farther banks. The wide main street of the village runs 
parallel with the river, with a grassy park through the 
centre, overhung with shade trees. Wealth, learning and 
rehgion have their abiding places here, and have helped 
to make this New England village the resting place of 
the weary and the working place of the industrious. 
Aspetuck Hill guards the north, and Chestnut Land 
rises in rounded green hills to the east, covered with 
fruitful farms, with their ample farm houses and ca- 
pacious barns. This ridge divides New Milford from 
Washington, and from its highest point — the Cobble — 
the towns already named may be seen, together with 
Roxbury and a part of Kent, while on a clear day the 
long line of the blue Catskills stands out in bold relief 
against the sky, together with the spires of Litchfield, 
the county seat. In Washington, a view worth going 
after may be had at what is known as Steep Rock. 
The lands about this rugged cliff are owned by one of 

145 



The Delectable Mountains 

the town's Summer visitors, and are preserved for a 
sort of public park, under private management. Six 
miles of roadway have been built, winding over rustic 
bridges, in and out among the trees, to the very sum- 
mit of the rock. The Shepaug River here and farther 
up toward Litchfield is wild and wayward, making 
crooked courses through the valley over huge boulders 
and around bluffs crowned with hemlocks and birches. 
Another viewpoint in Washington ought not to be 
overlooked. It is in tliat part of the town known as 
New Preston, and is called the Pinnacle. A steep climb 
will bring you to a rocky eminence, from which you have 
the surrounding country mapped out before you. Lake 
Waramaug, to the west and under the very shadow of 
the mountain, is as beautiful a lake as one can find, even 
though he cross oceans and continents in his search. 
The words of Sir Walter Scott, written of Loch 
Katrine, flash to one's mind and lips: 

"And thus an airy jjoint he won, 
Where gleaming in the setting sun, 
One burning sheet of living gold 
Loch Katrine lay beneath him rolled ; 
In all her length far winding lay, 
With promontory, creek and bay, 
And mountains that like giants stand. 
To sentinel enchanted land." 

These mountains around Waramaug could hardly be 
called giants, and indeed Scott drew on his imagination 
somewhat when he called those about Loch Katrine by 

147 



The Delectable Mountains 

that name; still, the}^ are larger than those which you 
look upon here. There is INIount Tom to the north 
and eastward, with its rounded top, reminding one of 
JNIount Tabor, in Palestine, although it has such a pro- 
saic name. Centrally located in the county, it overlooks 
a fair part of it. Nestled at its side as if for protec- 
tion is its namesake lake, while Bantam, the largest 
sheet of inland water in the State, stretches away to 
the eastward. If Waramaug suggests one of the Scotch 
lakes, then Bantam may be likened to the Lake of 
Zug, in Switzerland, surrounded as it is by wide acres 
of fertile farm lands and apple orchards. jMount Tom 
was the Delectable jNIountain of our boyhood days, for 
it was not far from the old red school house. An after- 
noon was given up occasionally to climbing its steep 
sides, golden milestones in the patliM^ay of youth. From 
its top the world seemed transfigured. You travelled 
in a moment's time down the winding length of the 
river at its base, and back again to the silver lake which 
marked its head waters. From white church spire to 
white church spire you went more rapidly than any 
twentieth century flying machine could carry you. You 
became then and there a traveller, an explorer, a lover 
of the beautiful. Geography and history and all learn- 
ing meant more to you. An hour here was worth a hun- 
dred in yonder schoolroom. The soul expanded with 
its first real sight of the world. 

Turning your steps to the northward, you came to 
Ivy JNIountain Tower, in the town of Goshen, where 
j'ou are afforded a wide, sweeping view in all direc- 

148 



The Delectable Mountains 

tions. The Catskills are on the western horizon, and Tal- 
cott jNIountain, in Hartford County, is on the eastern. 
From this point almost all the high elevations in the 
county may be seen. All these are the last of the Green 
JNIountain range, which have wandered down into Con- 
necticut through jMassachusetts, where they are called 
the Berkshire Hills. The towns of Winchester and 
Norfolk have a number of these breezy viewpoints which 
are well worth climbing. Piatt Hill, a mile east of 
Winchester Center, and four miles from Winsted, com- 
mands a view of a dozen or more church spires on 
a pleasant day, together with Highland and Crystal 
Lakes. 

The highest point in the State is Bear JNIountain, in 
the town of Salisbury. The top of this, which may be 
seen by all the dwellers in the region round about, is 
crowned by a pyramid of stone, surmounted by a bronze 
ball, erected by the late Bobbins Battell, of Norfolk. On 
this monument is a tablet indicating that the top of 
Bear Mountain is 2,354 feet above the sea level. Salis- 
bury is decidedly the lake town of Litchfield County, 
as it is dotted all over with most delightful sheets of 
water. Following out the comparisons which have been 
used in this article, this view from Bear JNIountain would 
remind one of that which is obtained of Windemere 
and Grassmere from an elevation just back of the home 
of the poet Wadsworth. Our Connecticut view, how- 
ever, is larger and more open, the hills and valleys have 
a wider sweep, while no lake is as large as Windemere. 
Looking down upon these lakes, they sparkle and 

149 




Oh 
O 



The Delectable Mountains 

dimjDle in the sunlight, as the soft breezes sweep over 
them. Opal gems in their emerald settings, they ever 
change with the changing sky and clouds. Beneath and 
about you are such lakes as the twins Washining and 
Washinee, Wononoscopomuc, with Lakeville and the 
Hotchkiss School upon its shores, the IVIount Riga lakes 
lost in the forests of the north, with here and there little 
lakes which seemingly have escaped from their moth- 
ers, although they may be tied to them by those winding 
brooks, veritable apron strings. Eastward opens up 
the broad valley of the upper Housatonic, with Nor- 
folk on the distant hilltops. Along the line of rail- 
way and river are the villages of Canaan, Falls Village, 
Ashley Falls and Sheffield, while farther north and seen 
only with the eye of faith, even from this high point, are 
Great Barrington, Lee and Lenox, together with old 
Stockbridge, This is the valley of content and rest- 
fulness, bearing by good rights that ancient name for 
the promised land. 

"Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood 
Stand dressed in living green ; 
So to the Jews old Canaan stood, 
While Jordan rolled between." 

It would be hard to find a view anywhere excelling 
this one from the top of Bear INIountain. Hither the 
original inhabitants of this region must often have come 
in the old days to sweep the horizon for signs of their 
enemies. Here they built their signal fires, rude tele- 

151 



The Delectable Mountains 

graphic signals as wireless as any of to-day. And here 
on this Delectable Mountain shall come lovers of the 
beautiful in the days that shall be. Our best wish for 
them is, that here, in elevation of soul, they may "be- 
hold the King in His beauty, and the land which is 
far off." 




152 



LITCHFIELD COUNTY 
SKETCHES 



XV 

Huckleberrying 

IT all depends upon how you spell it. If as above, 
you are to the manner born, and know the luxury 
of huckleberry pie, or a bowl of bread and milk, 
black with fresh picked berries. If you spell it "whortle- 
berry," you are from the city, and from any county 
in the State save Litchfield. Your knowledge of the 
berry is derived very largely from the dictionary. I 
shall hear you call blueberries huckleberries, and de- 
clare when you have tasted them that you like one just 
as well as the other. That is the shibboleth that shall 
betray your place of birth. 

They grew, those luscious berries, by the roadside on 
the way to school, and we lunched on them in the morn- 
ing and picked and took them home for our supper at 
night. They grew by the side of the pond where we 
fished, and refreshed us at intervals when the perch and 
bullheads would not bite. The boy was sure of a bite, 
anyway. During the month of August, when they did 
most abound, we fairly lived upon huckleberries. jNIem- 
ory recalls the theological student who returned from 
the Green ^Mountains, where he had preached during 
his first vacation, living in the mean time upon salt fish, 

153 



Huckleberrying 

hard boiled eggs and soda biscuit, very, very rich in 
soda. This thin, lank, half -famished young preacher, 
taking bitters for his indigestion, came down to the old 
farm in Harwinton — that good old huckleberry town — 
where his sister turned him out to grass and huckle- 
berries. Tradition hath it that he gained eight pounds 
in twice as many days, and went back to New Haven 
fully able to digest Harris's "Systematic Theology" and 
Hoppin's "Homiletics." 

Harwinton has as fine huckleberry fields as any town 
in the county. It has also a large Congregational 
church, which dominates all the landscape, as it did the 
thinking of the sturdy farmers who thronged to its 
worship on Sundays. Its capacious galleries were full 
of the boys and girls, while the rear gallery held the 
men singers and the women singers, who sang a lifetime 
to the worshippers below. Thej^ did not mince matters, 
but sang with the spirit and the understanding, while 
the congregation faced about, turning its back upon 
the minister, the better to enjoy the fine work done by 
its musical men and women. In those days there was 
nothing that could be called congregational singing. 

You may still pick huckleberries on the hills and 
catch trout in the brooks, while the old church keeps 
guard over its three graveyards, looking across and up 
and down the valley, but alas ! when the bell rings only a 
handful of worshippers assemble, and the choir is but 
a ghost of its former self. "Mary Abijah's" wonder- 
ful voice is heard no more, and the congregation now 
gives heed to the minister even during the singing. The 

155 



Huckleberrjdng 

Huntington chapel — a gem in granite — in memory of 
the mother of a milHonaire, is likely in time to be the 
church edifice, although the congregation of a half cen- 
tury ago could not have gotten within its doors. Some 
of the fathers sleep in the hillside graveyards, but some 
joined their children in city homes, and these old places 
that once knew them so well know them no more. 
Strangers have become their ploughmen. But the 
prophecy has had an unheard of fulfilment, for stran- 
gers and aliens own many of the old farms, and a half 
dozen languages are spoken in the presence of the an- 
cient huckleberry bushes. 

The city lady once on a time came to Harwinton to 
regain health and vigor through breathing pure air, 
drinking real milk and eating fresh country fruit and 
vegetables. She had heard of the delights of huckle- 
berrying and must needs go herself. She was driven 
over a rough, stony wood-path to the old pasture lot, 
disturbing her fitness of things and likewise her liver. 
Her country hostess fell to the task of picking the de- 
licious berries, bending lovingly above the bushes or 
kneeling adoringly before them, or camping down in 
front of them on cool grass and not so cool stones. The 
sun beat upon her, but she heeded it not; the bushes 
scratched her hands, she expected it ; the snakes wriggled 
away, she let them wriggle. She came for berries, and 
berries she would have. But what of the city lady? 
Getting around among the bushes was "just horrid." 
She would surely tear her skirts. Then, too, the sun 
was so hot, and it tired her to bend over. She was 

156 



Huckleberryiiig 

sure there were dreadful snakes in the bushes. Behold 
her, then, sitting on a pile of carriage cushions under 
the shade of an umbrella, picking daintily from the 
bushes which her faithful attendant had broken off and 
brought to her! This despite the fact that both bushes 
and green berries were sacrificed. But she w^as get- 
ting what she came for — health. The soft air fanned 
her pale cheek, the brook sang its best Summer day song, 
in loAv pitched key, the cicadas rasped out their shrill 
advertisement that the day was hot and they were 
happy, the fragrance of the new^-mown hay came from 
an adjoining meadow, while the far-away hills were 
brooded over by the farther away blue sky. 

The whole family at the old farm house sometimes 
go huckleberrying. Father is so nearly through haying 
that he will go and drive. Dinner shall be taken along, 
and a camp kettle and coffee pot. This time the 
pasture lot is on a hilltop, whence the kingdom of 
Litchfield County can be seen and the glory of it. 
Yonder is Town Hill, in New Hartford, w^ith the white 
steeple of its ancient Congregational church, forsaken 
in these later years by its congregation, but well cared 
for by its lovers. Under its shadow Tracy Pitkin, Yale 
graduate, Chinese missionary and martyr, played and 
nourished his heroic soul. It matters not where his 
body rests, since his work was so nobly done, the story 
of which you may read on that marble monument be- 
neath the dome of ^Memorial Hall, at New^ Haven. Be- 
fore he died he dedicated his little son to the cause of 
Christ his Master in China. 

157 



Hack leberryii^ 

From tins same UH so near ffae dky line, Mbare we 
went to find faoddeberries bat are fiiMffng sc 
hotter, yon may look across the raHer to ihe w 
Slid see the s^re at Ihe Toningford dnref. 
overshadowed ihe boose in windi Samndl X >T 
bom — be of the haystadi^ and Anda^et, and A:. 
Vresideot GriiSn of WilHams said of him tibat 
five nnssooarr societies were bom in his m. 
heart The father of the Amoiean Board of . 
3lLs^on$, the inspire of his genaation^ with a noble 
desire to fulfil the command of tiie l^ord, and -'.:'-. 
pkmeer in Atrksn missODS, he grew iqp in a hnrr",.^ 
parsonage, and left the rich legacy €ff has life f csr o6i^Ti 
to p«f eet with ^aeir faith and sdf-saerifiee. Too ar^ 
indeed near sacred ground in toot ImddeberrT patdi. 

When tiie f amihr c[oes berrying the most impor- : 
fmiction is tiie dicier. The fire is built betweai v 
stones, tibe oofiTee pot ^epared and set boOmg, and '±^ 
contents of the kettle — boOed com and potatoes — se 
widi the cold meat. Beneath the dtade €3f a str^rrs- 
. beaten, ice-fnroken c^ dbestnot we eat, drink and ar*^ 
thankfoL baring f cs- a dessert a diafa of berries eorer^rd 
over wiih real cream — a didfi fit for any son or da&g-i- 
ter of th^e mamnficent hiDsu 



159 




LITCHFIELD COUNTY 
SKETCHES 



XVI 

The Neglected Graveyard 

THEKE are scattered about among the hills of 
our count}^ not a few neglected graveyards. 
They are not so common, perhaps, as they 
were a quarter of a century ago. In some of them 
have lain for long years the bodies of Revolution- 
ary soldiers, without monument or sign to indicate 
the honored dead who lie buried there. The marking 
of these graves has been the task of the Daughters of 
the American Revolution, and they have entered upon 
it with an enthusiastic appreciation of the debt which 
we owe to these old soldiers, whose names we would 
not forget. In searching after their burial places, these 
daughters have been astonished to find so many neg- 
lected graveyards, and have used their influence to have 
them better cared for. 

Another cause which has led to the better care of 
these forsaken "God's Acres" has been the coming back 
into the county of the children and grandchildren of 
those who were buried there. The rebuilding and re- 
storing of the old farm house have led to the looking 
after the resting places and the monuments of their 
ancestry. If it is worth our while carefully to trace 

161 



The Neglected Graveyard 

out the long lines of our progenitors and build libraries 
and churches in their memory, surely it is just as com- 
mendable to see that the plot of ground where they 
are buried is suitably inclosed and properly and de- 
cently cared for. There is room for the development 
of veneration of our ancestors. 

I well remember the lonely, unkempt cemetery where 
we laid our little brother to rest. It was on the bank 
of a pond much frequented by the frogs, noisily dis- 
turbing the otherwise still and fearsome night. An 
old wall inclosed it, with wooden stairs, gradually fall- 
ing into decay, leading over it. A few of the graves 
were well cared for, but weeds, briars and brambles 
crowded their way among the mounds of earth. It 
was situated in a part of the town which was notorious 
for Sabbath-breaking and drinking. There was not 
a pleasant association about the spot, and children hur- 
ried by it with hearts in their mouths and bated breath. 
A few solemn spruce trees pointed their slender tops 
skyward, and at night the wind sang a funeral dirge 
through their swaying branches. This particular grave- 
yard rapidly went from bad to worse, as families 
moved away or died out, leaving the dead to the ten- 
der mercies of the town and to strangers. There came 
a day when the old schoolmaster's soul was mightily 
moved by the sight, and he determined, either alone or 
with the help of others whom he might interest, to 
clear it up and make it more inviting to the living and 
more worthy of the dead. ^lay coming generations 
keep his grave green and his monument erect! That 

162 



The Neglected Graveyard 

reminds me of tJie common sign of neglect that one 
sees in these burial places. The headstones, set in the 
earth without any base, have been thrown by the frost 
until they lean in every way from the perpendicular. 
They remind you, as you look through the graveyard, of 
a forest through which the tornado has passed. Some 
stones lie prostrate on the ground, broken in pieces; 
others have been picked up and set against the wall or a 
tree, as one might pick up a drunken man and lean him 
against something, hoping that thus he might be helped 
to stand. 

Passing through one of these neglected graveyards, 
one is struck Avith the names, which are no longer found 
among the li^dng. When the grave was made, every- 
hodj in tlie town knew the mourned occupant. Now 
the town's people come and say, "Who was this man 
who lies buried here? We never heard of him; none of 
his name now live among us." This in itself accounts 
in part for the lack of care so often shown these sacred 
places. 

On my father's farm there was a neglected grave- 
yard. It was back a quarter of a mile from the house, 
on the edge of a dark wood. A substantial stone wall 
inclosed it. There were less than a half dozen graves 
in it, and those evidently of one family. The boy paused 
as he drove home the cows and read the inscriptions upon 
the marble slabs, now brown with age. Xo one knew 
anything about those buried there save what was writ- 
ten on the stones. They were born, so the stones said, 
in such a year, and died in such a year, but who cared 

163 



The Neglected Graveyard 

whether they ever Kved or not? Quite sizable trees, 
fed on the rich mould, and brambles made it hard to 
pass through this inclosure of the dead. It was not 
always thus. Loving hands laid this little child here to 
rest, while the scalding tears flowed. The mother felt 
that she must have the mound of earth near enough to 
keep it covered with fresh flowers. Often the father 
and mother came here at close of day, and spoke gently 
of the life which like a welcome light had gone out in 
their home. The father laid with his own hands the 
stones in the wall to better guard the newly-made grave. 
No weeds grew in the inclosure, but flowering plants 
were made to bloom here, and a well-trodden path led 
from the house to the grave of this little child. At 
night, with axe on his shoulder, the father came from 
the forest, leaned against the wall and gazed tearfully 
at the mound of earth which the first snow was cov- 
ering. Those tears somehow served to cleanse his soul 
and make him a better man. The snows of a dozen 
Winters have melted, and the birds have come and gone 
a dozen seasons, when you behold another procession 
winding through the meadow and coming toward an 
open grave. The mother now rests by the side of the 
child ^vhich she loved so well. Henceforth the father 
is divided between the lonely house on the hill and the 
graveyard by the wood. His heart is in the latter rather 
than the former. The farm does not attract him as it 
once did. His step has lost its elasticity. He sits in 
the gloaming by the window and looks out toward the 
wood. Often he is seen to stand on the slope of the 

165 



The Neglected Graveyard 

hill watching the white marble slabs. Then there comes 
a day when he, too, is carried along the path toward 
the wood and laid to rest. A son and daughter come 
from the city to attend the funeral, and stand and read 
the inscriptions on the tombstones of mother and little 
sister. They will have an appropriate monument for 
father as soon as the estate is settled. The old farm 
must of course be sold, as they have no use for it. But 
if they sell it, what will become of the graves of their 
dear ones? "We will come back once each year, at 
least, and care for them," they are saying. The farm 
passes into the hands of strangers, the great city calls 
them with its myriad voices, sons and daughters demand 
their attention, and the graves are neglected. It is an 
old story, as old as the first family. The living bury 
their dead, and too often forget them and the place 
where their dust was laid. The strenuous life of New 
England, the pressing problems which must be solved, 
the drift westward and farther westward, have made 
these neglected graveyards possible. Every town in 
its corporate capacity should religiously and faithfully 
care for these burial places of the dead within its boun- 
daries. This is the least that can be done for those that 
established the town and made the life of to-day pos- 
sible. It matters not whether these cemeteries are under 
the shadow of the old meeting house or on some aban- 
doned highway. There should be no j^artiality shown 
for the location or for the social standing of the dead 
while yet alive. If this is ancestor worship, let us have 
more of it. 

166 



LITCHFIELD COUNTY 
SKETCHES 



XVII 

The Yankee Farmer 

IT is not so very long ago that the larger part of 
our population in Litchfield County were farm- 
ers. The minister, the doctor and the judge each 
had his own farm, larger or smaller, which he cultivated 
either directly or by proxy. The cultivation of the soil 
was the principal means of livelihood, and hence all 
were interested in it. There was no subject talked of 
more at the corner store on week days, and under the 
horse sheds on Sundays, than the crop prospects, the im- 
provement of the soil, the exchange of farms, and mat- 
ters more or less directly connected with them. The 
manufacturing villages along our water courses are the 
g-rowth of the last o-eneration or two. The farmer in 
our county is still in the majority, but he is not now 
always a Yankee farmer. The ends of the earth have 
been drawn upon in the cultivation of the Litchfield 
County farms. It was not so fifty years ago. The 
foreign population then was small and confined very 
largely to hired laborers. To speak of the men of our 
county as farmers, at the close of the war or earlier, 
would have well described them. Let us draw the char- 

167 



The Yankee Farmer 

acter sketch of those forebears of ours, that we may see 
"vvhat kind of men they were. 

Famihes growmg up in isolated localities, and out- 
side of the great world currents, will naturally present 
much of originality. The Pilgrims — the original New 
Englanders — put themselves thus outside of those in- 
fluences M'hich were shaping character and life in the 
Old World, causing theirs to be cast in new and strange 
moulds. As a class our New England farmers were in 
appearance stern and austere. Their views of the Divine 
sovereignty, and their experience in wresting from the 
soil a livelihood, had helped to make them so. They were 
not demonstrative, and were not given to the display 
of their affections or emotions. If there was a law in 
Connecticut forbidding a man to kiss his wife of a 
Sunday, it did not so much matter, for he was not given 
to kissing her very much on any day of the week. He 
did not \A eep often, and when he did weep it was not in 
the sight of men. His moral nature predominated rather 
than his feelings. He was not emotional; his nerves 
did not lie near the surface. He was true to his family, 
his Church and his country, although he would not boast 
of it, taking it all as a matter of course. He was not 
a man of words so much as of thought and of deeds. 
Like the electric needle, pointing always to the pole in 
silence, so our Yankee farmer pointed toward righteous- 
ness and truth without the blare of trumpets. He was 
not a copy of any living man, but resembled John the 
Baptist more than the Christ. The country solitude had 
impressed itself upon him. He knew that he was the 

168 



The Yankee Farmer 

forerunner of those who should come after, and the lay- 
ins- of the foundations of a millennial Church and State 
was serious business. He had a strong physique, and 
could endure almost any amount of hard work and ner- 
vous strain. This in itself was of great worth to him 
and has been of value to his children. He was brainy, 
not bookish, and thought out his work and worked out 
his thought. He made his thin soiled farm pay him 
because he fertilized it with brains and pulverized it 
with muscle, and that kind of farming would make a 
Litchfield County farm pay to-day. He did not own or 
read many books — a small shelf would hold them all — 
but he knew one Book from cover to cover. He had 
not much time for reading, but much time for thought. 
He was not esthetic, but loved and appreciated the beau- 
tiful, and his soul was often stirred by it. One of his 
number looked over the artist's shoulder as he was finish- 
ing a beautiful landscape and said, "Yes, sirree, I like 
'em, and thar ain't nobody that appreciates them better 
'an I do, an' I do believe if I bed a hundred thou- 
sand dollars I'd be pesky fool enough to buy some of 
them things." 

The Yankee farmer was a natural theologian. He 
thrived on Calvinism and "Edwards on the Will." His 
sermons must be dogmatic, dealing with those profound 
questions of the Divine sovereignty and himian free- 
dom. On the other hand, his religion was often as heart- 
felt and simple as a child's. He was opposed to all 
priestcraft and ecclesiasticism, and suffered no man 
to lord it over God's heritage. The minister must be 

169 



JSii #^ 




"The Yankt'e fariutn- was practical, porseveriiii;, counigeous. 



The Yankee Farmer 

one of the members of the local church, chosen and or- 
dained by it, and hence he was one among equals. He 
could not abide a dark church edifice, but loved the old 
white meeting house. Stained glass, ministerial milli- 
nery and all rituals were an abhorrence to him. He 
would not observe Christmas even, lest it should savor 
of popery. He would call no man master in Church 
or State, and had no respect for kings or bishops save 
as men. He is usually classed as conservative, but it 
would be nearer the truth to call him a radical in both 
politics and religion. That, indeed, was proven by his 
cutting away both from Church and State in the Old 
World and here founding the new order of things. He 
clung to the old so far as he thought it good, but was 
ever reaching out after the new and the better. New 
England has led the world in radicalism for two hun- 
dred years, and most things that are new start east of 
the Hudson River. The Yankee farmer was practical, 
persevering, courageous. As Martyn said of the Pil- 
grims, so it might be said of him: "Doubt and hesitancy 
were dropped from his vocabulary. 'I dare not' never 
waited on 'I would.' " Stern necessity inculcated cour- 
age and made him inventive and progressive. 

Our farmer of the old days had not much ready money, 
for the farm produce was in the main exchanged at the 
country store for such things as he could not produce. 
His farm might be worth a few thousand dollars, but 
the family was usually large, and strict economy and 
thrift were demanded. He saved so closely that he was 
often called stingy and mean. This was carried at times 

171 



The Yankee Farmer 

to the verge of dishonesty, if not clear over. The best 
apples may have had a tendency to get to the top of the 
barrel, but when did they ever have any other tendency? 
He may not always have given "good measure, pressed 
down, shaken together and running over," but his 
pound was a fair pound and his bushel a fair bushel, 
ordinarily. This much can be said: when he was gen- 
erous it was not with other people's money. He sat in 
the gallery at times to save pew rent, and laid himself 
open to the charge of stealing his preaching. However, 
he is readily excused, since preaching is not a bad thing 
to steal. 

The Yankee farmer was characterized as a shrewd 
guesser. Ask him a question, and the only answer 
might be, "Wal, I guess so," or "I guess not." This 
word "well" served as many purposes as the German 
word "so." He was sharp ej^ed, quick to see through 
things, and "take a sense" of them, as we say. His wit 
was more like that of the Scotch than like that of any 
other people. Accosted one day by some smart young 
fellows, who thought to make game of him by asking 
him if he believed that Balaam's ass really spoke as the 
Bible indicated that it did, his reply was, "Wal, I do' 
know as it is any harder to believe that the ass spoke 
like a man than it is that men speak like asses." A 
visiting Englishman was greatly impressed by the sever- 
ity of a thunderstorm, and accosting an old resident said, 
"Isn't this pretty severe thunder and lightning?" "Yes," 
answered the farmer, "considerin' the number of the in- 
habitants." 

172 



The Yankee Farmer 

Conscientiousness was his prominent characteristic. 
He Hved in a realm where God and conscience reigned 
supreme. He would do what he thought was right, 
though the heavens fell. An appreciation of the 
Divine righteousness and the desire to walk according 
to the Word of God were his in large measure. Two 
things he prized and worked for unwearyingly — his 
church and his school. He planted them side by side, 
and wrought ever for their highest usefulness. These 
two institutions have made our country what it is, show- 
ing that those rugged men and women were far seeing 
and prophetic. They were wont to take a long look 
ahead, and built for the generations yet unborn. They 
felt the responsibility that rested upon them, and did 
not live in ease and pleasure, but sacrificed for the high- 
est good of their generation and the untold generations 
that should come after them. They were benevolent, 
and opened their hearts and their pocketbooks for the 
establishing and maintaining of missionary work at 
home and abroad. Their benevolence was not measured 
by what they had, but they denied self in order that 
they might have something to give. It was no uncom- 
mon thing for a family to go without certain articles of 
food for the purpose of laying aside the value of them 
for missions. Butter they would deny themselves for 
weeks at a time, so as to give more for the doing of the 
Lord's work at home or abroad. 

The Yankee farmer was a lover of liberty as well as 
a lover of God. Carrying his musket to church did not 
seem incongruous to him. Holding the town meeting 

173 



The Yankee Farmer 

in the vestibule of the church, or in the church itself, was 
to him a proper use of the House of God. Both his 
religion and his government were worth fighting for, 
or dying for if need be. He left the plough in the fur- 
row and obeyed his country's voice, and the dust of 
Yankee farmers fills soldiers' graves oftentimes un- 
known and unmarked. Some ^^'ho read these lines will 
recall those men and boys, from the farms of Litchfield 
County for the most part, who marched forth so bravely 
as the Nineteenth Regiment, Connecticut Volunteers. 
Their history was written in their blood on the hard- 
fought battlefields of the Southland. A remnant only 
returned, and even those had given their best strength 
and vitality to their country. 

They are gone for the most part, those old-fashioned 
men and women who used to live on the hilltops and in 
the valleys, and a new generation has taken their places, 
and the world will never see their like again. Their 
simple manners, kindly ways and gentle, homely lives 
are of the past. We may have greater men and 
more liberally educated women, but we shall have 
no better. The Pilgrim blood is thin and blue, and 
runs but feebly through the veins of those of to-day. 
It has even come to pass that men who owe all they 
have and all they are to a New England parentage 
are found sneering at the old faith and manners. 
That which the sons and daughters of these Yankee 
farmers have accomplished at any time or anywhere has 
been because of that heritage of body and brain, heart 
and soul which has come to them from their ancestry. 

174 




c 

a 

3 
> 



The Yankee Farmer 

The most successful business men, the brightest lawyers, 
the most skilful physicians, the most learned statesmen 
and the best and truest ministers of the Gospel have 
come of this old stock. The cities and the great West 
have been replenished and made fruitful from the rocky 
farms of Litchfield County. What is to become of the 
nation if this supply shall cease altogether? Rivers may 
for the present be beautiful and strong, but what would 
they be without the fountains high up among the hills? 
The splendid rivers of thought, of invention, of com- 
mercial and business life, of benevolence, charities and 
education would be comparatively small and worthless 
without these fountains among the granite hills of New 
England. It certainly is becoming for those who love 
their country and their fellow men to pray that the 
kindly dews of heaven may so fall upon these beloved 
hills of ours that these fountains of usefulness and 
power may not wholly cease, and that the promise may 
be fulfilled, "Instead of thy fathers shall be thy children, 
whom thou mayest make princes in all the earth." 

Whittier, who perhaps understood the New England 
people and character better than any other of our poets, 
and who gave us his thought about them so beautifully 
in "Snowbound," may utter for us our closing word: 

"Clasp, Angel of the backward look 
And folded wings of ashen gray 
And voice of echoes far away, 
The brazen covers of thy book; 
The weird palimpsest old and vast, 
Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past; 

176 



The Yankee Farmer 

Where, closely mingling, pale and glow 
The characters of joy and woe; 
The monographs of outlived years, 
Of smile-illumed or dim with tears, 

Green hills of life that slope to death, 
And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees. 
Shade off to mournful cypresses 

With the white amaranths underneath. 
Even while I look I can but heed 

The restless sands' incessant fall. 
Importunate hours that hours succeed. 
Each clamorous with its own sharp need, 

And duty keeping pace with all. 
Shut down and clasp the heavy lids ; 
I hear again the voice that bids 

The dreamer leave his dream midway 
For larger hopes and graver fears: 
Life greatens in these later years, 

The century's aloe flowers to-day !" 




177 



'^ 



IRBAo 



